I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!
by EvilFuzzy9
Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic] [Now has a TV Tropes page!]
1. Time Travel is a Terrible Idea!

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Naruto Uzumaki, Lord Seventh Hokage, had absolutely no reason to travel back in time. When he was younger and more naïve, he may have desired to undo some of the tragic losses in his life, but the man he was now knew that such things were an inevitable, even <em>necessary<em> part of his life.

He was much older and wiser than he had been during the Fourth Shinobi War. He knew better than to go fooling around with the laws of nature.

Theoretically, time travel was _possible_. Nothing in what shinobi knew of physics and the laws of causality directly contradicted this. There were even some who claimed it had been done before, who claimed to know of people who knew of scrolls which held such powerful and forbidden techniques, and while there was no _definitive_ proof that any of these alleged time travel jutsu were authentic, scholars on such matters generally agreed that there was always a _chance_.

Which was why the Lord Seventh Hokage went to such lengths to seal away any and all such jutsu scrolls he came across. Whether they worked or not, it was Naruto's opinion that time travel was something far too dangerous to be risked.

He had no desire to find out if any of those so-called time travel jutsu actually worked. As far as he was concerned, the risks far, far, FAR outweighed any of the meager potential benefits.

The world was at peace. It wasn't a perfect utopia by any means, and there were still occasional, limited conflicts, but compared to the uneasy, watchful peace of his youth, and the all-out chaos of his teenage years, what the hidden villages had now was like a _dream_.

So much effort had been put into forging and upholding these truces, these good-will pacts of limited mutual disarmament and demilitarization, that Konoha's honorable Nanadaime saw the possibility of time travel as nothing but a headache just waiting to happen. The alliances, the promises, the slowly and painstakingly established friendships which had enabled all of this to be achieved were all just too valuable to be thrown away in a fit of piqué.

He was not about to let _anyone_ stupidly undo all of the work he and the other kage had done, especially not anyone so full of themselves as to honestly think that they could do _better_. Nothing was perfect. What they had now was as close as Naruto believed they would ever achieve within his lifetime.

So he wasn't about to let anyone go and start fucking up everything he and his comrades had sacrificed _so much_ to accomplish.

Naruto Uzumaki had no reason to go back in time. Some things may not have turned out how he would have wanted, but the risk of undoing all of the _good_ was just too high, too appalling, to even _consider._

Unfortunately for the Lord Seventh Hokage, however...

...the Powers That Be would apparently beg to differ.

* * *

><p>When the thirty-five year old Naruto woke up in a filthy, dank apartment, his first instinct was to wonder if Kiba had dragged him off to some dump on a bender. His second instinct, upon getting out of bed only to stumble over his own feet and land flat on his face, was to wonder what the hell his drinks had been spiked with.<p>

It wasn't until he stood and shook his head, looking around and narrowing his eyes, that he realized something was very amiss. The scale of this room was all off. It was far too big for an ordinary person.

He wasn't exactly the tallest guy around, but he wasn't a shrimp either. And Naruto hadn't been this close to being at eye level with a doorknob while standing straight up since...

...well, since he was just a kid.

"I swear, if this is Yamato's idea of a prank..." the Lord Seventh muttered, scowling and grumbling about wood style users with terrible senses of humor.

Standing back up, Naruto extended his chakra senses, expecting to find a telltale trace of the ANBU captain's pine-scented essence.

What he found instead left him extremely bemused.

He was SURROUNDED by unfamiliar chakra signatures. And while maybe only one or two of those signatures were actually within a dozen meters of him, it was still suspicious enough to make him frown.

Naruto crossed his arms, wondering absently why they felt... _scrawnier_ than he remembered.

He was very proud of his sensory ninjutsu. Years of refining his technique with help from Karin-neechan had enabled him to wield considerable empathic powers even without tapping into Kurama's chakra. Even half asleep and possibly hungover, Naruto had a rough maximum sensory range of one hundred kilometers.

If he dipped into Kurama's chakra, his area of perception would easily encompass almost the entirety of the elemental nations. And while Naruto wasn't anywhere near obsessive enough to try and commit every one of those innumerable chakra signatures to memory (particularly since his ability to detect life was acute enough to even pick out individual microscopic organisms, if he focused), to feel only two or three immediately familiar auras within his entire base range of perception was _distinctly_ worrying.

The signatures he _did_ recognize, however, were sufficiently reassuring to head off any hints of tension that might have otherwise begun to surface.

* * *

><p>When Sasuke Uchiha woke up that morning, the first thing he noticed was that he had two arms.<p>

For most people, this would have been entirely reasonable, even _expected_. But Sasuke had not had a full left arm since his teenage years, when the limb had been blown off in a clash of obscenely high-powered jutsu between him and his closest friend/fiercest rival.

So to wake up with one was... disconcerting, and vaguely annoying, to say the least.

After the end of the Fourth Secret War, Naruto and most of those closest to Sasuke had almost immediately forgiven and forgotten all of his many transgressions between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, ranging from defection, attempted murder, high treason, assassinating the acting hokage, several more counts of attempted murder, and trying to spark a continent-wide revolution.

They were happy to have him back, and liked to pretend that none of that stuff had ever really happened. Tsunade and Sakura had even tried to hook him up with a Shodai-putty prosthetic shortly after the war.

But Sasuke had refused this offer.

_Vehemently._

Partly, his reasoning had to do with the fact that the idea of replacing his missing arm with a bunch of mutant adult stem cells from a man who had died around half a century ago was just _gross_. He couldn't even stand drinking from another person's canteen, and they expected him to be fine and dandy with gluing some sort of tree-man corpse-tumor onto the stump of his elbow?

Yeah, **no**. His fight with Kabuto had left Sasuke borderline paranoid about body modification. That naked chick crawling out of the man's chest and flashing him with her lifeless clone tits had been traumatizing enough. He didn't want to have the stem cells of some long-dead _Senju_ fused to his shoulder.

That would be just a little too Madara for his tastes.

Of course, aside from the Uchiha's squeamishness there was also the underlying motivation of _atonement_.

He may have been forgiven for most of the shit he had done leading up to the Fourth Shinobi War, and even that halfhearted, almost immediately-thwarted plot to assassinate the Gokage, but he had still done wrong by a LOT of people. Maybe he'd had his reasons at the time, but the man he was now refused to forgive himself all of the awful things his younger self had done.

He had to live with his mistakes, and try to make up for his many transgressions. He did his best to remember all of the wrongs he had done, chiefly so he would never go off and do them again.

He lost his arm trying to kill Naruto – _his best friend._

In Sasuke's opinion, replacing that arm would be like saying it no longer mattered that he had attempted to murder one of the only people to keep faith in him all the way up to the bitter end. Naruto had believed in him, and done his damnedest to save Sasuke from his inner demons even when the Uchiha had personally been doing his college best to rip out the Uzumaki's throat.

He had tried to kill Naruto with his left arm. He had attempted to commit an unforgivable sin with that hand.

Dimly, he remembered hearing a bit of foreign scripture in his post-war travels that spoke of cutting off any part of yourself that caused you to sin, saying that it was better to go into paradise a cripple than to suffer eternal damnation fully intact.

Sasuke didn't know about anything else that monk had said, but that much at least had rung true with him. So much so that he had almost attempted to pluck out his own eyes then and there.

The holy man had been highly disturbed by this, apparently having meant his sermon in a much less _literal_ sense than Sasuke had taken it, and only reluctantly had the Uchiha listened to the man's request to **please** not mutilate himself right in front of the children.

Whatever his ultimate reasoning, though, Sasuke had stubbornly refused to ever replace the arm he had lost. No matter _how_ hard his friends tried to convince him otherwise.

And on at least one memorable occasion, his wife had even secretly grafted on a new arm in his sleep.

It had taken the hungover Sasuke half the day to realize what Sakura had done, that time, and when he did he'd irritably ripped the arm off at the elbow and flung it aside.

Much to the visiting daimyo's distress.

So.

Feeling this new replacement arm, Sasuke figured that Sakura or Naruto had probably taken another shot at convincing him to replace his missing hand.

He did not appreciate the gesture.

"Dammit, you guys..." he muttered, irritably grabbing the offending limb in his hand. "What part of _'__I don't want a new arm!'_ can't you understand?"

Casually, and effortlessly, Sasuke flicked his wrist and ripped off this most recent replacement limb.

It took him a second to register the blood.

And by the time he did, the blinding pain was almost bad enough to keep him from focusing long enough to cauterize the wound with an emergency kagutsuchi.

Well.

_That_ was unexpected.

* * *

><p>Sakura was the first one to realize she had traveled back in time. Mostly because:<p>

1.) She had woken up in a bed only big enough for one.

2.) She appeared to have been sleeping in her childhood bedroom.

3.) Her childhood home had been destroyed by Pain's big ass Shinra Tensei over a decade ago.

4.) Even if that house and her bedroom had still been intact and standing, her childhood bedroom should have felt much smaller to her adult self.

And

5.) Her chest was completely devoid of anything even remotely resembling actual boobs.

This last detail was the most telling, because while it was possible that someone could have built a perfect replica of her childhood bedroom and scaled it up to freak her out (which sounded like just the kind of collaborative prank that Naruto, Sai, and Ino might pull off if they were feeling especially bored), Sakura felt reasonably certain she would have noticed undergoing any kind of breast reduction surgery.

Also, whatever this was, it sure as hell wasn't a _genjutsu_. She'd had enough kinky illusion sex with her husband in his tsukuyomi to know most _intimately_ when something was and wasn't real.

So, adding all of these details together (and taking a peek at the calendar just to be sure) Sakura felt it was pretty safe to say that she had somehow traveled back in time. And judging by the _almost complete_ _flatness_ of her chest, she reckoned that her current body was somewhere around twelve or thirteen.

Fortunately, her chakra reserves seemed to be completely intact, or else this could have been a Very Bad Thing.

As it was, Sakura just hoped she wasn't the _only_ one to have wound up in the past, or else this was going to be a very long, very _boring_ wait.

* * *

><p>Hinata was immediately aware of one thing when she woke up:<p>

_Her husband was not in bed next to her. _

Activating her byakugan, she saw that he also wasn't anywhere in the house. Also, that this wasn't their house.

Half asleep and distinctly horny, Hinata felt exceptionally grateful in advance for being married to one of the most vigorous and generous lovers alive. She also felt very little patience for anyone who might try to get in between her and her husband.

Hinata's feelings for Naruto had strongly defined a considerable portion of her life. Her admiration for his determined spirit had led her to try and improve and overcome her own weakness. Her love for him had led her to take action multiple times in her teenage years, where she otherwise would have stood aside and let someone else come to the rescue.

And the mature, more erotic love she felt for Naruto as his wife had let the former Hyuuga heiress overcome much of her old shyness and bashfulness. She was by no means without shame or restraint, but when it came to her husband she could be shockingly bold.

Which is probably why the first thing Hinata did upon standing up from her futon was to blow through the nearest wall with an over-powered vacuum palm. And also why the _second_ thing she did was to stalk off the premises of the Hyuuga manor, heading as the crow flies straight towards the unmistakable beacon of her husband's chakra.

The fact that this entailed blasting her way through many more walls and branch house members, while dressed in nothing but her (admittedly conservative) pajamas, did not bother her in the slightest.

Hinata Uzumaki had pined over a decade for Naruto before he had finally come to reciprocate her feelings. She was not about to let _anything_ keep her from seeking him out and showing him her love.

Over and over and _over_ _again_.

* * *

><p><em>Good news: I'm still in Konoha.<em>

This was Naruto's first thought after stumbling his way, half naked, out of that vaguely familiar apartment. He still felt dreadfully hungover, and the open sunlight was like a pair of red hot daggers being stabbed into his skull.

He was distracted from the murderous headache, however (stupid Kurama never letting him use his chakra to fix those fucking hangovers... grumble grumble...) by the sight of the hokage monument.

_Bad news?_

There were only four faces.

_It looks like I'm in the past. _

He pinched the bridge of his nose.

_God-fucking-dammit._

This realization naturally put the Lord Seventh Hokage in an _extremely_ foul mood. He had sealed away all those alleged time travel jutsu scrolls for a _very good reason_.

"I better not be the only one here..." he muttered, dressed in just boxers and an undershirt, looking down irritably at his much scrawnier twelve year old body.

Had he ever actually been this SMALL? It seemed inconceivable.

He was then distracted from his thoughts by a very familiar flare of distinctive fire chakra roughly in the direction of Sasuke's old apartment. It was quite small, considering the sort of things Sasuke usually broke _that_ jutsu out for. Probably no more than a little flicker of flame.

And it disappeared almost immediately too. Humming thoughtfully, Naruto noticed that Sasuke seemed to be in a good deal of pain – physical rather than emotional, for once, although there was a much smaller degree of distress directly associated to that sudden spike of _ow_.

Cocking an eye curiously, Naruto then zoomed in on Sakura's signature.

She seemed mildly annoyed, but it was well within the standard deviation. People got annoyed all the time over little, meaningless things. Often when dealing with him.

Naruto was perfectly accustomed to that sort of feedback, and it didn't raise any of his eyebrows.

Something he DID notice, however, was a not-so-distant growing throng of slight surprise and confusion, along with a very familiar flavor of _desire_ attached to a chakra signature he knew as well as that of his own kids.

Despite their current circumstances, Naruto couldn't help the cheerful grin that came onto his face. He could tear a new one out of whatever asshole had landed them in the past _later_. For now, however, he had a frustrated wife in need of some stress relief.

And he could do with blowing off some irritation, too.

"Hello, dear!" Naruto said to Hinata Uzumaki nee Hyuuga. "How are you feeling?"

The twelve or thirteen year old Hinata gave her twelve or so year old husband a curious, but also intense, look.

"...Naruto?" she said wonderingly, having long ago dropped the _-kun_ honorific. If there was anyone she could reasonably address with the intimacy of a first name basis, it was the Lord Seventh Hokage and father of her children.

Naruto sweatdropped, seeing the befuddled expression on his wife's face.

"...yeah, it looks like we're in the past," he commented.

Hinata frowned.

"So... Bolt and Himawari...?" she murmured, her expression falling.

Naruto winced. He squinted, looking a touch anxious.

"Yeah... I'm sure we can find a way back, but..."

Hinata smiled softly.

"They'll be alright for a little while," she whispered. "Until we can return to our own time, at least."

Naruto grinned, and took his wife's hand.

"Yeah... until then," he murmured. Then his expression turned foxy, and he grinned at Hinata. "Want to go inside, m'dear?" he said with a playful wink.

Hinata giggled, and batted her eyes at him.

"Mm, but of _course_," she said in a tone that would have been quite husky if her present body were capable of producing such sounds.

Naruto picked her up in a bridal carry, and brought her in over the threshold.

* * *

><p>Ten minutes later, a very angry and flustered looking Naruto stormed right back out of his apartment. He was fully dressed, now, glaring down at his own crotch, and radiating a generous amount of killing intent.<p>

Those inhabiting the floors below him in the apartment complex promptly experienced an inexplicable, simultaneous loosening of their bowels. One particularly elderly tenant even suffered a brief heart attack, though fortunately it was while their children were visiting, and thus able to get them immediate medical attention.

Hinata came out of the apartment a moment later, still dressed in her conservative, unrevealing night clothes. She was smiling weakly at Naruto, and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"Don't worry, dear," she said softly. "I hear it happens to most men now and then."

Naruto spared a forced smile for his wife, before glaring once more down at his groin.

His eye twitched.

"...I'm gonna kill whoever got us thrown back in time," he growled. "Fuck causality, fuck the laws of nature. I don't even care about that garbage anymore... multiverse theory or some shit, I don't know..."

He threw his head back, then, tearing out fistfuls of his hair and screaming in frustration.

"BUT I AM **NOT** GOING THROUGH PUBERTY _AGAIN!_"

* * *

><p>AN: Some people like time travel fics where everything is drama and angst and overpowered main characters plowing through their enemies.

Others, including myself, like time travel fics where everything is snarking and crack... with overpowered main characters plowing through their enemies.

I would like to think that this will become the latter.

(Also, atoner!Sasuke should totally become a thing.)

**Updated:** 11-29-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	2. Like an Old Married Couple

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>"<em>Sigh.<em> What am I going to do with you, Sasuke?"

These were the first words the Uchiha heard upon his return to consciousness, after drifting in a haze of blinding pain for an indeterminate length of time. Ripping off that prosthetic arm had apparently not been such a good idea, considering how the blood proceeded to get everywhere.

"I should be asking you that, hon," Sasuke chuckled weakly, grinning at the face of his wife. His vision was still a touch blurry from the tears that welled up in response to the inexplicable agony which shot up from the stump of his arm, but he would have recognized that shade of pink _anywhere_.

He felt his wife's chakra fluctuate by the most microscopic fraction of a percentage as she flicked one of her hands over a badly charred elbow. As he blinked the saline out of his eyes, he could begin to make out the minuscule chakra scalpels which delicately chipped away at the burnt tissue, surgically excising the useless flesh a tiny bit at a time whilst simultaneously exhorting the healthy cells to split up and replace the damaged ones.

No matter how many times he watched Sakura at work, Sasuke could never get over how damned _hypnotic_ her medical jutsu was. It was entrancing in a way he couldn't really explain. His sharinnegan – as a tipsy Konohamaru had once famously dubbed it – let him see the finest details of her mystic palm technique, and the infinite subtlety of Sakura's chakra control never ceased to fascinate him.

It was one of the odder reasons to find a woman attractive, he supposed, but something about Sakura's medical ninjutsu just left Sasuke Uchiha all but completely incapable of tearing his eyes away. He marveled at her skill, the absolute confidence and precision with which she worked.

His visual prowess gave Sasuke an aesthetic appreciation for his wife's medical skills that surpassed even the pragmatic gratefulness for her healing abilities. Her every motion was exactly as she meant it to be, her chakra doing nothing she did not will it to.

It was sublime. Watching Sakura do her thing as a medic was like watching one of the renaissance masters at work. She had absolute control of her hands and her chakra.

"Like what you see?" Sakura teased her husband, seeing his eyes on her hands... which _also_ meant that his gaze just so happened to be on level with her chest.

Sasuke blinked, then, suddenly realizing something.

Hearing Sakura's voice a second time, he now had the clarity of mind to perceive a curious oddity. She didn't have the subtle rasp, or slightest purring tenor she had come to possess as a mature, fully grown woman. The aural texture of her voice was less rich than Sasuke was accustomed to, less aged and refined. He heard less of a resonance in her torso, less depth and richness in her tone.

If Sasuke didn't know any better, he would have said it sounded almost like Sakura was...

He blinked again, his eyes flicking momentarily from Sakura's hands.

He stared at his wife's chest for several silent seconds.

"..._huh_," he said at length, staring at what should have been at least a modest swell. "I know I said I liked them on the smaller side anyways, but... what happened to your breasts?"

"The same thing that has happened to your little kusanagi, I'm sure," said Sakura frankly, smiling down at her husband.

Sasuke's eyes wandered up from his wife's presently non-existent rack, and he stared blankly at her face. Particularly her forehead, which appeared to be completely devoid of something to which he had become very accustomed over the years.

"And the same as what's happened to your seal of a hundred strengths?" he wondered.

A beat.

Sakura's previous statement finally got through his skull, and Sasuke's sharingan/rinnegan combo widened.

"Wait," he said, his voice sounding far more high pitched than it should have in his sudden distress. "_What's happened to my penis?_"

Sakura smiled sheepishly at her husband.

"I'd say... about negative twenty-three years," she quipped.

* * *

><p>Ko was a member of the Hyuuga clan's branch house. He was adequately skilled with the gentle fist, and possessed a byakugan of average strength. In no way was he terribly remarkable, save perhaps that he was one of the younger branch house members currently in active service.<p>

Neji was younger still, of course, but the young teen was also Ko's superior in skill. Plus he rather vehemently and _openly_ loathed the main house of the Hyuuga, so there were naturally certain duties that could not exactly be entrusted to him.

This was not to say, of course, that Neji was the only cadet branch member to dislike the main branch. Bitter feelings ran deep between the two houses of the Hyuuga clan, and many of the lesser clansmen fairly resented their treatment at the hands of the few, elite main branch members.

Ko himself had enough reason to mutter darkly about the clan elders and their policies, and he was not exactly the clan head's biggest fan. But he was also a reasonable, responsible young man. He did not begrudge the duties laid at his feet as a member of the branch house – the basic idea was little different from what most shinobi did for the village, and he took a small amount of pride in the thought of being trusted to protect the secrets of the byakugan from those who might try to steal it.

Dying for the sake of the clan was a noble, even admirable act. Most Hyuuga, branch house or main, would say that such a death would be a good one. This was something both parties agreed on.

The caged bird seal was unpleasant, perhaps, inasmuch as the fact that it basically served as a convenient kill switch for uppity branch house members, but keeping the clan's kekkei genkai from being stolen by ambitious corpse-robbers was a high priority. The seal's main purpose was to destroy all genetic markers involved in activating the byakugan, as well as sealing away the eyes themselves.

This much, at least, was reasonable. Many clans had similar procedures for eliminating any biological traces of their secret arts or bloodline limits. If there was any chance of enemies being able to get their hands on a corpse, it was standard procedure to destroy any and all evidence that might enable people to reverse engineer the techniques or medications which empowered their shinobi.

Frying the brain with a handseal was technically just a side-effect of the caged bird seal's original, _primary_ purpose. While this "side-effect" had been used in the past to keep members of the branch house in line, Ko and most of his peers also knew that even the most hardline, callous SOBs in the main branch frowned heavily on the careless use of that particular _feature_.

Even if they were expected to live out almost the entirety of their natural lives as meat shields and body doubles for the chosen few elite, kin were still kin. The Hyuuga, being a very old and powerful family, were every bit as clannish as the Uchiha or Senju. Binding the majority of their relatives with powerful, brain-nuking curse seals was not_ that _much worse than some of the other traditions to have survived from the Warring States Era.

With the exception of a few unfortunate souls like Neji, most cadet branch Hyuuga could accept the caged bird seal, and the role as expendable shields to protect the main branch. They were a ninja clan, after all: such things were an integral facet of their existence.

Where Ko and many other branch house members drew the line, however, were things like THIS.

"Hinata-sama... _please_ return home with me. Your father would like a word with you."

Ko looked at the girl with a grimace, hoping she didn't notice the slight shiver that raced through him when she returned his glance, or hear the faint whimper that he couldn't quite manage to choke back when she _smiled_ at him.

It was always the nice, quiet ones, wasn't it? When they snapped, they snapped _hard_.

And, considering the swathe of destruction Hinata had carved on her way out of the Hyuuga estate, Ko felt fairly justified in his assessment that the poor thing had finally _cracked_ under the pressure.

A part of him pitied her, knowing how much stress the lass had been under to try and meet her father's expectations.

The rest of him was absolutely terrified.

Sure, up until today Hinata had seemed like the kindest, gentlest, most innocent and harmless little girl ever... but they said _Itachi_ had seemed like a nice kid too, and look where HE wound up.

As Hyuuga went, Ko was not remarkable in any way. He was of average height, average build, average skill, and average looks. If you were to chart all the various aspects of Hyuuga clan members and draw up a theoretical median for each of their different traits, the overall result would probably look a lot like Ko.

Basically, he was just one step up from nameless fodder. He had about as much character as a Star Trek redshirt, and roughly equivalent chances of surviving any kind of serious shit. If so much as a gentle breeze wafted through the Hyuuga estate, Ko would be one of the first casualties.

He was completely expendable, and he damn well knew it. Which was probably why he was mentally cursing Hiashi and his ancestors to the seventh generation (which also happened to include a number of Ko's own predecessors) as he valiantly tried to convince the seemingly-snapped Hinata to return with him peacefully to the manor.

Hopefully, she wouldn't decide to kill him **TOO** painfully.

* * *

><p>Sasuke stared at his wife. It took him several long minutes to process what she was saying.<p>

"_What._"

His words were as flat as his wife's chest, his expression as blank as a fresh sheet of paper.

"We're in the past, dear," Sakura repeated more explicitly. "Back to about the age of twelve, if my calendar is right. Which it probably _is_, seeing how fastidious I've always been about such things."

Sasuke blinked owlishly.

He sat up in his bed, looking down blankly at the stump of his left arm.

"...well, that certainly explains the blood," he said blandly. "And the pain."

He looked over at the freshly discarded arm which lay at the foot of his dresser. The skin was pale, and the amount of blood on the floor and the upholstery would probably mean hours of cleaning. Sasuke's bedsheets were thankfully much less red, a quick and almost reflexive application of his EMS flame control having stemmed the bloodloss mere fractions of a second after it had started.

"Yes, it does," said Sakura, audibly tutting at her husband's impulsiveness. "That wasn't a prosthetic. Not that you should have ripped it off even if it _was_ one..."

The Uchiha clan head at least had the decency to look _vaguely_ contrite.

"I never would have expected to wake up in the past," he commented. "It's hard to believe what you're saying. I probably wouldn't, if not for certain pieces of evidence..." He glanced again at his wife's chest. "...Do you have any idea how this might have happened?"

Sakura shook her head.

"No, and I'm not sure who else might have come back with us, either," she said, before pausing and frowning worriedly. "Er... You know, assuming we're not the _only_ ones who've come back in time."

She didn't sound very hopeful in that regard.

Sasuke hummed thoughtfully. He glanced around his room for a moment, before nodding his head and speaking up again.

"Naruto's a given, at least," he said. "I just _know_ that, somehow or other, this has something to do with him."

A beat.

Sakura chuckled wryly, nodding in agreement as she wrapped some gauze around the stump of Sasuke's arm.

"He _does_ have a habit of winding up at the center of these kinds of things, doesn't he?" she mused.

* * *

><p>Hinata stared at the branch house clan member who had just come running up to her. He was shaking like a leaf and sweating bullets, talking to her like one might talk to a rabid dog they all but <em>knew<em> was going to bite them.

She frowned subtly, detecting that Naruto had inched sideways from her as well. In his case, of course, he was clearly trying to act inconspicuous and make it look like his presence here next to the Hyuuga clan's present heiress was just an innocent coincidence.

Logically, Hinata understood why her husband would want to try and avoid complicating matters by letting on that he was in a relationship with her, since originally at this point in time Naruto had barely even registered her existence.

It still irked her a little, though. While she was sympathetic to her husband's earlier plight in the bedroom, and could tend to herself well enough until such a time as he was able to resume his marital duties, that didn't mean she liked the thought of having to distance herself from him.

She'd already EARNED her happy ending, dammit! She didn't want to go through the motions all over again until such a time as they could reasonably get back together without drawing any undue attention from the wrong people.

"...sooo...um, if you would p-p-please be so k-kind, Hinata-sama..." Ko was stammering, trying futilely to coax the clan heiress into coming back to the estate with him.

It was a rather pathetic sight, honestly.

Hinata frowned. Inwardly, she felt a tiny bit sheepish.

Knowing now that she was in the past, it made sense that certain of her actions that morning may have led her family to make particular wild assumptions. In this time she wasn't known as the Seventh Hokage's wife, Konoha's very own _yamato nadeshiko_ incarnate. She was just a delicate wallflower, here, a quiet and insecure young kunoichi who also unfortunately had the weight of the Hyuuga clan shoved onto her shoulders by a miserable accident of birth.

Feeling the slightest hint of irritation, Hinata grabbed her husband by the collar. He had been trying to skulk off, which was a perfectly sensible course of action in this instance, but Hinata was NOT feeling particularly _sensible_ at the moment.

Unconsciously, and unintentionally, Hinata let loose a tiny bit of killing intent in silent frustration, yanking Naruto closer. Compared to what she _could_ do if she got serious, the bloodlust she projected right now was barely the lightest tickling of a feather on the back of one's neck.

Relatively speaking.

_Objectively_, seeing as how this was a kunoichi on par with the best of the best, in combat ability and mastery of her arts able to rival the likes of Itachi Uchiha or Kakashi Hatake in their prime, it was still some damn serious _sakki_.

Ko, the poor fellow, very nearly pissed his pants.

* * *

><p>Sasuke looked at himself in the mirror, Sakura standing a little ways off behind him. He could not help but be amazed at how <em>young<em> they both looked. Aside from his now-missing left arm, and Sakura's now-sensibly trimmed hair, the two of looked remarkably like the fresh genin in their old team photo.

Well, aside from Sasuke's sharinnegan... and their overall demeanor, as well. She was more sure and confident in her poise, where he was more laidback and mellow. Neither of them was the same person they had been when last they were at this young age.

Time had changed them: time, and hardship, and Naruto Uzumaki. They were adults; full grown shinobi.

_Parents_.

"I hope Sarada is doing okay without us," Sasuke whispered, staring at the reflection of his face.

He could see his daughter in so many aspects of his youthful visage, in his cheekbones, his chin, and the shape of his eyes. A part of him wondered, idly, whether she had indeed inherited the genes for _these _eyes, the sharingan which blazed back at him from his reflection.

Another part of him hoped she hadn't, hoped that she could live a happy and peaceful life without ever having to worry about feeling _too_ much, without ever having to fear the descent into madness which would surely come if she lost the ones most precious to her.

He wished he could have many children, give his daughter many little brothers and sisters to dote on and play with and tease. Sakura had broached the subject with him more than once, but every time she had raised the possibility, his mind's eye had flooded with images of his own family, of himself and Itachi, and the bloody, twisted cords of love and hatred which had bound their fates together.

And every time, without fail, he would feel the burning in his eyes, the tears of blood flowing down his cheeks, and know that no matter what else he did, he could never let himself subject his precious, beloved daughter to those same vile temptations which had nearly destroyed his clan and driven him into the deepest depths of darkness.

"I hope that multiverse theory is accurate," Sakura added, seeing the emotions which flickered across her husband's face. "Or else... she might already no longer exist."

She glanced meaningfully at Sasuke's missing arm, and he scowled.

"It _better_ be accurate," the Uchiha clan head growled. "Because I won't hesitate to rip the space-time continuum apart at the seams if it means getting to see her again."

Sakura nodded, and silently prayed that it wouldn't come to that.

Considering the level of power he and Naruto wielded, Sasuke's threat was hardly idle.

"Until then, though," she said, interrupting her love's dark thoughts, "would you be a dear and help me reapply my yin seal? Considering the changes you've already made, I suppose it probably can't hurt to be prepared."

Sasuke looked sidelong at his wife, smiling softly.

"How long do you think it will take you to charge it up?" he asked her.

Sakura waved a hand dismissively.

"Our chakra came back with our minds," she said. "We may be in our twelve year old bodies, but we have all the control and capacity that we did as adults. It should only take me a week or so to fill up my _byakugou no in_ to a workable level. And that's pumping her up from scratch, mind you."

Sasuke nodded.

"Fair enough," he said. "That's pretty convenient."

"Explains how you could rip your arm right off, too," Sakura added. "You have the same control as your future self, so it's a simple matter to unconsciously boost your physical capabilities with precision chakra manipulation."

Sasuke smiled, and glanced around thoughtfully.

"Yeah..." he murmured. A pause. "Say, have you got a sealing brush on you?"

Sakura nodded, even as she started to disrobe.

* * *

><p>Naruto briefly considered making a break for it.<p>

He only dimly recognized the person standing before him and Hinata thanks to the strong family resemblance between Hyuuga, but he was fairly sure that whoever this guy was, he would NOT be happy if he found out what he and Hinata had just been doing in his apartment...

...or...

...well, _trying _to do, anyways.

It seemed that the Seventh Hokage hadn't **quite** hit puberty yet at this point in time, much to his continuing frustration.

But, _still_. While Naruto only had a very general recollection of his childhood, he did remember well enough that most people Had Not Liked Him. It was debatable whether the member of a shinobi clan like the Hyuuga would be so uninformed as to mistake the "jail" for its "prisoner", but he hadn't exactly done anything to endear himself to them yet in this timeline.

Well, aside from _Hinata_, according to what his wife had told him of her childhood admiration for him, but that wouldn't exactly fix his problem. Son of the Yondaime or not, Naruto was pretty sure that the Hiashi of this time was NOT about to smile and tearfully give his blessing to him and Hinata.

So, quietly, trying to make himself seem as innocent and unimportant as possible, Naruto started to tiptoe away from Hinata and her relative.

He made it about three steps before he felt his wife's hand on his collar.

With a yelp, he was tugged back to Hinata's side, and she fixed him with a meaningful look which told him very clearly that she was _not_ in the mood to be dealing with this shit on her own.

"Ah, sorry..." Naruto mumbled sheepishly. He looked at Ko. "Um, what can I do for you this fine day, Hyuuga-san?"

He flashed a weak smile at the probable branch house member, a bit of sweat trickling down his brow.

The young man blinked, and did a double take.

"Wh...What are _you_ doing here?!" he yelped, sounding more tense than anything.

"I live here," Naruto said lamely, pointing at the apartment door behind him.

The Hyuuga blinked again, and turned to stare at Hinata. His expression was a curious mix of dismay, disbelief, and utter discombobulation.

"...what?"

"I live here," Naruto repeated for the man's benefit. "This is my apartment."

He paused, inwardly furrowing his brow as he silently added:

_...I think._

* * *

><p>"So what day <em>is<em> today, anyways?" Sasuke asked Sakura, once he'd finished applying the formula for the hundred-strengths seal to her body. "If we're in the past."

He may not have had Naruto's knack for fuuinjutsu (the blond having spent many years studying those arts in order to live up to the considerable reputation of his clan) but Sasuke was still nonetheless pretty skilled at sealing, if he did say so himself. And he was also doing a very good job of neither getting too aroused or too weirded out by his wife's mostly-naked form beneath him.

Jutsu formula sealing scrit, runes and written leylines, gleamed and sparked as they crawled over Sakura's skin. Artistic tendrils of ink swayed and writhed to and fro over the kunoichi's bare flesh, glowing and glimmering as the whole spiderweb of writing slowly retreated to the single drop of blood which had been precisely smeared over her ajna chakra.

Sasuke watched almost boredly, detaching himself from the fact that this was his beautiful and loving wife's practically naked, twelve year old body that he had just finished writing on and around. The ritual circle on his bedroom floor flashed as it drew Sasuke's chakra from the seal, letting Sakura's energies fill the writing up in its stead.

In a matter of seconds, the whole array which Sasuke had painstakingly scrawled onto Sakura's body had receded up into her forehead, the entire jutsu formula compressed into a singular point. The smear of blood on Sakura's brow melted away, and her skin was bare once again.

Sakura relaxed, and let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. A smile quirked her lips, and she beamed up at her husband. Her chest heaved with heavy breaths, the girl visibly worn out from the process of applying the seal. In time, her naked brow would bear the diamond mark indicative of a _byakugou no in_ at functioning capacity.

"Mm... according to the calendar in my room, today's the day Kakashi-sensei gives us the bell test," the young woman said, panting and sweaty, her skin flushed in a manner that was rather inappropriately suggestive of certain _other_ activities which could be done in her present, nigh nonexistent state of dress.

Sasuke blushed, and he wasn't sure whether to be thankful or dismayed that he didn't feel any immediate... _stirring_... below the belt.

Then he blinked, his brain belatedly processing what Sakura had actually said.

"Ah. I **see**. And what time is it?" he wondered.

"Earlier than Kakashi-sensei would be there," Sakura drawled.

Sasuke checked his clock.

It said _8:24 am._

"Oh, yeah. We still have another couple of hours, at _least_," he mused. Nodding, he then added: "Do you think we should go see if Naruto came back with us?"

Sakura smiled slyly at her husband.

"At least give me time to get dressed, dear," she said. "Unless you _want_ me to visit him practically naked~?"

Her teasing colored Sasuke's face, and he spluttered sheepishly.

"R-Right," he mumbled, blushing hotly at the thought. "Sure, go ahead and get dressed. Just don't take _too_ long, okay?"

Sakura smirked.

"I make no promises," she said. "A woman has to look her best, no matter where it is she's going."

"As long as you don't spend an hour putting on make up," Sasuke replied, the redness fading. "We don't need to be arriving even _later_ than Kakashi."

Sakura rolled her eyes, letting out a most unladylike snort.

"Oh, please. That was one time, and he was already there in the first place. It WAS his wedding, after all."

"Really? And how about _Yamato's_ wedding?"

"Okay, _two_ times. But it's not like YOU'VE never gotten us late for anything, Mr. I'll-take-as-much-time-in-the-shower-as-I-need-to-wash-my-hair," Sakura drawled. "Does _Naruto's inauguration_ ring a bell?"

"Long hair requires a lot of care!" Sasuke replied defensively. He almost looked like he was about to start sulking. "Besides, the way I remember it, _you're_ the one who suggested it'd look good if I let my hair grow out."

"And it _did_ look good," Sakura said with a smirk, her eyes glinting. "Now if only we could do something about that left arm of yours..."

Sasuke was the one to roll his eyes, this time.

"I can do everything you need with just the one," he said, smirking suggestively at his wife.

Emerald eyes glinted, meeting Sasuke's heterochromatic orbs with a hungry gleam.

"Oho?" she purred. "And are you of a mind to _prove_ that little boast?"

Sasuke smirked, and his eyes lit up.

"I'll do more than just prove it," he said with a husky growl.

Clothes went flying everywhere, and two youthful bodies (_oh god lee flashbacks repress repress_) fell to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

* * *

><p>Ko blinked. He stared at Naruto.<p>

Dimly, he recalled that there was something important about the boy, but all he could think at the moment was a flat, toneless _what_.

He stared at Hinata, blinking owlishly as he tried to process what Naruto had just said. It did not escape his notice that the clan heiress's pajamas looked a little messy, or that he had seen her and Naruto emerge from the very same apartment the blond had pointed to.

It was not outside the notice of the girl's family that she had often taken to covertly watching the Uzumaki boy train. She had been quietly following the lad around for a few years now, having what seemed to be an innocent, precocious crush on the rather infamous prankster.

Ko had often been assigned to watching Hinata while she was out, covertly following the heiress to make sure nobody tried to pull off a repeat of that Hidden Cloud fiasco (while he was aloof and demanding, Hiashi-sama _did_ worry about the girl's well-being, and was very clear on making sure that she was properly supervised within the village limits). Ko had as such more than once watched the girl watch Naruto.

Most clan members who cared to discuss such matters were at least distantly aware of the nominal heiress's fondness for Naruto Uzumaki. And while a modestly sizable portion quietly disapproved of this, most of the rest were ambivalent, or even found it "cute".

Ko, for what it's worth, _was_ in the third category.

He understood his role as a member of the branch house, and accepted his duty in preserving the Hyuuga clan's prosperity. He would give his life to protect the village his family called home, sacrifice his eyes and his freedom if that would keep the enemy from stealing the clan secrets. He respected the respective roles of the main and cadet branches.

This did not mean, however, that he particularly _liked_ the clan head. Hiashi was a stern man, and while he meant well enough, his attitude could still rub people the wrong way. He was also very protective of his daughter, and would probably kill anyone who dared to defile her at such a young age as this.

Ko secretly imagined that Hiashi would probably have a heart attack if he found out that the Uzumaki brat (whom Ko distantly recalled as being Bad News in some vague manner or other) had seemingly willfully fornicated with his twelve year old daughter. And while it might have been worth a laugh just to see what colors the man's face would turn, it would probably be better for all involved if this little incident was kept from the clan head's attention.

For Hinata as much as anyone else. Ko didn't pretend to understand why the girl had snapped that morning, but she looked relatively nonviolent now, and if the fact that she wasn't currently flinging him through the air like a rag doll could be attributed to anything the blond prankster had done, well...

Ko could look the other way. Just this once.

"If you come with me, Hinata-sama..." he said slowly, carefully. "...I'm sure we can forget all about whatever has happened here."

It was a gamble. If Hinata was actually still snapped, then words would be useless. But if she was in a state where she could be _reasoned_ with...

Ko only barely avoided having a heart attack when the girl smiled at him.

"Very well," she said uncharacteristically primly. "I will permit you to..." For a moment it sounded like she was suppressing a laugh. "..._walk me home_."

Hinata finished, her eyes glinting with something Ko decided he REALLY did not want to try and identify. Coughing anxiously, the Hyuuga branch member spared one last curious glance for Naruto Uzumaki, before shaking his head and gesturing for Hinata to follow him.

He did not notice the pair brushing their fists together for a split second. For an instant, it seemed like time had frozen for the boy and girl.

But then they smiled at one another, and nodded in understanding.

"See ya later, Hinata-chan!" Naruto chirped, doing his best to approximate the way he had spoken in his youth.

"That would be lovely, Naruto-kun," Hinata replied, mostly for Ko's benefit.

Naruto waved goodbye, and Hinata followed after Ko.

Inside the Uzumaki's belly, Kurama resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

_Humans_, he mentally scoffed. _They're even worse than rabbits_.

He was grinning, though.

* * *

><p>AN: Naruto and Hinata's half of the chapter was actually written first. It took me a day or two to get Sasuke and Sakura's scenes down. Also like five or six straight hours of writing, between this and a couple other things, so yeah.

Also.

On another note:

_**WOW.**_

I...

I don't think even _A Lewd New World_ got such a massive reception with its first chapter. I mean, this was published, what, four or five days ago? And yet it's already gotten 39 reviews, 136 follows, and 94 favorites, as well as being featured in 2 different communities.

This is... seriously my first non-smut fic to ever get such a big reception. Even _Unbiased_'s reception was practically _frosty_ compared to all the feedback I've gotten in regards to this fic.

I honestly wasn't even sure if it was that funny, but apparently you guys liked it.

A _LOT_.

So I will do my best to deliver! :D

Also, while doing my Christmas shopping, I wound up purchasing roughly half of the original _Naruto_ series anime box sets (this in addition to ALSO owning all of the pre-Shippuden manga volumes).

Thing is, the way Amazon had the box sets listed... I wound up buying only the _first volume_ _of each season_, and only after getting said box sets in the mail did I realize this. And finding the second volumes of those seasons was inexplicably complicated, requiring me to explicitly enter "naruto uncut box set season _x_ volume 2" into the searchbar for each one.

Which is weird, because Amazon is usually relatively good about listing related materials together... as it is, I'll wanna wait like another week before ordering those, now.

**Updated:** 12-3-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤

* * *

><p><em>P.S.: The following omake started off as the final scene of this chapter, taking place after Naruto and Hinata's last scene. I ultimately deemed it a little too M-ish, however, and made it into a non-canon snippet.<em>

* * *

><p><em><strong>OMAKE: <strong>_

_**sasuke and sakura's bedtime woes **_

Sasuke looked at Sakura.

Sakura looked at Sasuke.

They were lying in the Uchiha's bed, naked as the day they were born, both frowning irritably. Though their skin was rosy and flush with sweat beneath the covers, their youthful bodies aching and burning, they looked neither excited nor satisfied.

"...okay, this is just painful," Sakura conceded. "And not even in the fun way. Are you_ sure _you remember what you're doing, dear?"

"Strange," Sasuke murmured. "I know it hasn't been more than a week since the last time we've done it. And I'm not really feeling anything, either. It's just... sort of awkward and vaguely uncomfortable."

"You can barely get it up, at that," Sakura deadpanned, her eyes half-lidded. Not in a sexy or suggestive way, either.

"I swear this has never happened to me before," Sasuke insisted defensively.

Sakura sighed.

"...let's just go get Naruto. Alright, dear?"

Sasuke pouted, looking deeply affronted by his present... _difficulties_.

"Fine. Let's just get dressed and go meet him."


	3. Kurenai Doesn't Know What to Think

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Kurenai Yuuhi awkwardly shifted a standard issue flak vest over her torso, feeling dreadfully compressed under the dratted thing. She could hardly breathe in the damn vest, but she wanted to look good and professional for this meeting.<p>

The things women sacrificed for their careers.

Still, though, this was like wearing a bloody _corset_, and Kurenai could not help but feel uncomfortably aware of the numerous byakugan eyes on her as she strolled up into the Hyuuga estate.

The part of her that was still an insecure young teenager wanted to cover herself and squeal _pervert!_ at all the bulging veins and suspiciously pale eyes, even though the more logical, mature parts of her psyche scoffed at the idea of getting so worked up over the notion of being peeped on.

They lived in a ninja village, after all. ANBU knew the color of every last villager's morning constitutional, and privacy was one of the first luxuries a shinobi would learn to sacrifice on long term missions. Separating yourself from the rest of the squad just to bathe, change clothes, or... _relieve_ yourself was just ASKING for trouble.

How could you trust your teammates with your life if you couldn't even trust them enough not to stress out over being seen naked? That was a lesson every halfway decent kunoichi had to learn. It was a good lesson for _male_ ninja, too, at that.

Of course, there was that saying about what was okay on a mission not necessarily being okay in the village, but still...

Kurenai shook her head.

Trying to take her mind off of the painfully squished state of her chest, the illusion mistress glanced curiously at the tumbled wreckage of a nearby wall. Plaster dust, chunks of masonry, and snapped wooden beams were all heaped at the foot of a gaping hole. It reminded her a little of Asuma's first few tries at getting his burning ash jutsu down, minus the smoke and glowing cinders.

Branch house members scurried this way and that across the grounds. They carried building supplies and measuring tools, a nervous tension in the air as they murmured and gossiped. Kurenai caught a few brief snatches of their hushed conversations, listening in out of idle curiosity more than anything else.

"—yeah, he just woke up in the infirmary, and the first thing he did—"

"—says it's looking like over three hundred thousand ryo, as far as damages—"

"—I caught a glimpse of her, right after it happened... she looked like a thing possessed—"

"—just _know_ this is coming out of my pension... should've invested in stocks—"

"—it's always the quiet ones, isn't it? Who would have thought _she_ could—"

It would be untrue for Kurenai to say that she was not curious about what could have happened here. She was frankly _gobsmacked_ to see the extent of the damages: the Hyuuga estate looked like it had been hit by a herd of stampeding buffalo.

It was troubling on one level, though also amusing on another. She had never exactly cared for the more stuck up sorts who tended to populate these old, wealthy bloodline clans, but one of her new students _did_ live here. It would be a shame if anything had happened to her.

Hinata seemed like such a nice girl.

"Excuse me," Kurenai said to a passing clansman. "Would you happen to know where Hiashi-san is? I am here to talk with him about his daughter."

Team Eight had passed their true genin test with flying colors the day before, and Kurenai was honestly eager to start them on missions. Her nomination for jounin promotion had only recently gone through, and this would be her first time training a genin squad.

(She heard Kakashi had put off on testing _his_ team, the slacker.)

A more sadistic part of the woman couldn't wait to see how the kids reacted to their first D-rank missions. If she'd had to suffer through them, then so would her students.

That was one rite of passage she would be very happy to continue, now that _she_ was the jounin sensei who got to sit back, kick her feet up, and watch the newbie genin do all the dirty work.

Busy with thoughts of how Kiba in particular would respond to his first job as a ninja (not that she had anything _against_ him, mind you – the loudmouth Inuzuka would just doubtless have the most entertaining reaction), Kurenai almost missed the Hyuuga blanching at her question.

"Ah," he said, gulping nervously. "You... so you're here about... _Hinata-sama?_"

Even if Kurenai hadn't been a seasoned, elite shinobi, she still would have seen the obvious anxiety in this individual's posture. He looked as white as death, and was frozen stiff. His tone of voice had traces of _fear_, and his eyes flicked nervously to one side.

"I'm her jounin instructor," she told the man, who looked like he might have been pushing fifty. "Hinata's a genin now, and there are certain things I will need to clear with her father before I can begin the girl's training."

The Hyuuga – who, judging by the absence of any markings on his bare forehead was probably a minor member of the main branch – nodded his head weakly, staring off into the distance and avoiding meeting Kurenai's eyes.

"Y-Yes, of course," he said distractedly, and if Kurenai had thought it were possible at this point, she would have sworn that he had somehow gone even paler. "I will fetch Hiashi-sama for you. Please wait here... ah..."

"Kurenai Yuuhi," she provided.

"_Yuuhi-san_, yes," the Hyuuga said, nodding again, with a distant look in his eyes. "I thought you looked familiar. Yes, yes. I will tell him you are here."

And then the man turned and scurried off, looking like he had a rabid ninja hound snapping at his heels.

Kurenai watched him go for a few seconds, curious as to why the man was acting so skittish. After a moment's thought, she shook her head and dismissed the matter, taking another look at her surroundings.

Surveying the grounds of the manor absentmindedly, she noticed that most of the damage seemed to have been done in a straight line. It looked almost like someone had just waltzed right on through the heavily warded walls and dozens of Hyuuga guards.

Kurenai cocked an eyebrow, unsure whether to feel curious or worried. She had seen blast-style experts from Iwa who left less destruction in their wake. Either there had been some kind of freak accident involving a ten pound crate of explosive notes, or a medium-large size summon had plowed right through the estate.

The level of destruction before her eyes was honestly impressive.

Idly wondering what could have happened here to have caused so much damage without warranting direct intervention from the ANBU, Kurenai once more shuffled her flak vest over a frame which had grown well beyond the uniform's original measurements in... _certain areas_.

If Kurenai ever found out who had gotten the bright idea to base standard flak vest sizes on _male_ body types, she would have a few choice words for them.

(And people _wondered_ why most kunoichi didn't wear these damn things?)

Kurenai blinked, then, distracted from her irritated reverie. She turned her head to see the head of the Hyuuga clan coming towards her. Hiashi's face was unreadable as he approached, and Kurenai greeted him with a short, perfunctory half-bow.

"Hello, Hiashi-san," she said. "May I have a word with you? It's about your daughter's promotion to genin..."

Hiashi nodded absentmindedly, and when he looked at her, he seemed to be staring off into the distance.

"Yes, of course," he said distractedly. "Hinata's promotion. I hope there haven't been any problems?"

The way he said _problems_ raised one of Kurenai's eyebrows, but she shook her head.

"No, nothing like that," she told him. "It's mostly just a formality, but she _is_ heiress apparent, and so I will need your express permission regarding certain matters..."

"Mm, yes," Hiashi mumbled, nodding. "Of course, of course... Come, let us speak inside."

He gestured vaguely for Kurenai to follow him, and she did.

* * *

><p>It was with a grin on his face and a skip in his step that Naruto Uzumaki strolled back inside his apartment. Having enjoyed a nice long mental conversationplanning session with his wife, he was in a good mood, and feeling much less worried about screwing things up.

Rarely had the blond felt more grateful to his past/future/other self for taking the time and effort to reverse-engineer the principles of Old Man Rikudo's _ninshu_.

He'd actually used a crude form of it unconsciously back during the Fourth Shinobi War, when he'd bumped fists with his father to sync up their chakra while relaying his plan to save the allied ninja forces from the Shinju's omnidirectional bijuudama. And similarly when he had crossed jutsu with Sasuke, each of them reading one another's hearts in the heat of battle.

Working backwards from these instances, Naruto had eventually reverse-engineered his own variation of the Sage's spiritual communication technique (with a good deal of help from Ino, whose specialization in yin-style mental ninjutsu was invaluable for working out the kinks). And with this technique, he was able to swap intel and communicate mentally at great length, with only a momentary brushing of fists.

He didn't entirely understand the _mechanics_ behind his technique, but Naruto knew that it worked, and he and Hinata had come to some very important decisions during their brief mental communion.

That was a matter for another time, however. Right now, Naruto was rather preoccupied with a pair of familiar chakra signatures just outside his window.

Going over, and hearing it open, Naruto took a moment to stare at his teammates. Sasuke and Sakura were standing just inside his windowsill, a fragrant breeze wafting in from behind them.

"Hello, Naruto. Have you come back, too?"

That was Sakura speaking. Her hair was cut short, to about the length she had come to prefer in the future.

She was smiling – not a very wide or flashy grin, but rather just a slight, subtle quirking at the corner of her lips. It was a mild expression, showing just the slightest touch of general amusement.

Caution, too.

Naruto frowned slightly, flicking his eyes over to Sasuke. He met the Uchiha's onyx orbs, and the raven haired youth tilted his head ever so slightly: a quiet and subtle show of deference.

Blue peepers slid down, then, and saw the bandaged stub hanging out of Sasuke's left sleeve.

Naruto blinked.

Then he facepalmed.

"God-_dammit_, Sasuke..." he muttered. "You can never leave well enough alone, can you?"

The Uchiha quirked one of his eyebrows.

"And by that, you mean...?" he said slowly, probably in an attempt to verify what Naruto was talking about before actually spilling anything that might either incriminate them or get them tossed in an insane asylum.

"Your arm," Naruto groaned. "Why is it gone? _Again?_"

"It's symbolic," Sasuke said blandly, seeming to relax slightly when Naruto said _again_. "The hand I used when I tried to kill you is gone. Discarding it signifies my resolve to turn aside from the dark path I walked in my younger years. It's a sign of my penitence, and of my ultimate acceptance of your philosophy."

A beat.

Naruto stared at Sasuke, looking distinctly unimpressed.

"You know... I'm pretty sure you've tried to kill me plenty of times with your _right hand_, too," he drawled.

Sasuke rolled his eyes.

"Just because _you_ don't appreciate the symbolism..." he grumbled irritably.

Sakura gave a weak chuckle, and a _what can you do?_ sort of shrug.

"For what it's worth, he hadn't realize we were _back_ when he ripped it off," she told Naruto. "And I _did_ offer to reattach it for him, since we're, you know, in the past and all. But, well..."

A sigh.

"He burned it, didn't he?" Naruto deadpanned. He massaged his temples.

To his credit, Sasuke somehow managed to make himself look almost _innocent_ when the Lord Seventh said this.

"Sorry," Sakura said, looking sincerely apologetic. "I _tried_ to stop him, but..."

"No, no, it's okay," Naruto wearily interjected, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Honestly, compared to what _Hinata_ did..."

"Oh? She came back too?" Sasuke said.

"Yeah."

Sakura frowned. "Wait, what did _she_ do?" she wondered.

Naruto coughed, and avoided looking in his teammate's eyes. He appeared awfully sheepish.

"Um... well, the rest of her clan _might_ be under the impression that she's another Itachi waiting to happen," he mumbled.

Sasuke and Sakura winced.

"_Yikes_," the latter murmured. "So much for not changing things, huh?"

"At least she won't have to worry about being called _weak_ this time around," Sasuke said, trying to look on the bright side.

Naruto and Sakura shared a sweatdrop.

"...that's certainly one way of looking at it," the former mused. "Not necessarily the _right_ way, but it's valid."

"It might cause more headaches in the long run, though," Sakura added, "for them to think of Hinata as strong. She'll be under more scrutiny, for one thing."

"She might also be granted more freedom of movement, on the flipside," Sasuke responded. "Which could be very useful, if we plan on figuring out a way to get back to our own time."

"... ... ... How would we even _do_ that, actually?" Sakura wondered, chewing her lip thoughtfully. "If we don't know how we wound up going back in time in the first place."

"Well, first we'd need to find a time travel jutsu," Naruto said. "Y'know, to get an idea of the mechanics we're working with."

"But there's no way to know which ones are real," Sasuke muttered. "Right? Not without trying them. That's why you sealed such techniques away, whenever you came across an alleged one."

"Yeah, that's true..." Naruto said with a grimace. "There's no real way to know which jutsu will work, if any. And while I _suppose _I could maybe figure something out from scratch, with enough time and the right resources, that'd take me **years** of trial and error."

A silence descended on the trio, their faces falling. Their brows were furrowed in concentration, and they all looked lost in thought.

"...no matter how you look at this, we're probably going to be stuck here for a while," Sakura whispered at length. "So we might as well get settled in for the long haul."

Sasuke gave his wife a sympathetic glance. She smiled weakly at him, seeming almost apologetic in her demeanor.

Naruto sighed.

"So much for not changing the past..." he grumbled, looking ready to throw his hands up in the air.

But there was the slightest twinkle of mischief in his eyes.

* * *

><p>Inside a training dojo of the Hyuuga main branch, Kurenai Yuuhi was speaking to Hiashi.<p>

"As you know, now that your daughter is a genin, she would ordinarily be expected to start going on missions," Kurenai said, choosing her words carefully. "And, of course, while she will only be doing D-ranks at first, it is to be expected that eventually she will have to do more dangerous jobs as well..."

She was inside an undamaged wing of the Hyuuga manor, a main branch dojo, speaking to the man as he distractedly sparred with a young girl: only just of age to consider entering the academy, from the looks of her. Probably another daughter of Hiashi's – she definitely bore a strong resemblance to the man, in a _young and female_ sort of way.

Hiashi seemed oddly anxious, considering the stoicism his clan was usually known for, and his movements as he batted aside a clumsy knife strike from his probable daughter looked suspiciously jerky for a supposed master of the incomparably fluid and graceful gentle fist style.

"And such missions will invariably carry with them a certain risk to my daughter's life, correct?" Hiashi replied, his brow creased and furrowed.

"Indeed," Kurenai answered with a short nod. "And in this time of peace, with no immediate military threats to the village, it is naturally your prerogative as her father – and clan head of the Hyuuga – to request that she not be placed on such missions. As she is next in line to succeed you as clan head, I imagine that you might have... _reservations_... about Hinata needlessly risking her life."

"It would be well within my rights in this time of peace..." Hiashi murmured, distractedly sidestepping a quick yet badly telegraphed lunge from the young girl with whom he presently sparred. "...to request that my daughter be held back from dangerous missions."

"This is a right afforded to all clan heads in peacetime," Kurenai said, sounding like she had spent most of the previous night rehearsing this speech. "With no war to be fought, the village has an acceptable surplus of manpower, and there are no priorities which would supercede that of ensuring the succession of clan leadership."

Hiashi made a face, and absentmindedly struck a light blow to his likely-younger-daughter's shoulder. The girl winced, but nonetheless skipped back and corrected her stance appropriately. Beads of sweat trickled down her face, and she was panting heavily, but her eyes were hard and determined.

Gripping the training kunai tighter, the young girl made another sharp lunge, this time sidestepping at the last second. She rotated, and managed to score a glancing hit at the belt of the clan head's kimono. Had the knife been sharpened, the girl probably would have made a rip in the cloth; maybe even drawn a thin line of blood across Hiashi's hip.

Kurenai raised an eyebrow, mildly surprised that a person as famously strict and fastidious as Hiashi Hyuuga would allow any trainee to land a hit on him with such an amateurish strike. The girl's combat form still left a lot to be desired, and she herself would have made several more corrections to her stance before even resuming the spar.

Either the man was slipping as he approached middle age, or he was _seriously_ distracted.

"Hiashi-san?" she interjected. "Would you like to continue this discussion outside?"

She said this politely enough, gently reminding the man of her presence. If what she had to say was making him worry so much as to slip up this egregiously in a training spar, then perhaps it would be in everyone's best interest if he postponed this lesson and devoted his full attention to their present conversation.

The man blinked owlishly, looking as though he had suddenly been woken from a daydream. He shook his head, and for a moment Kurenai took this as a silent dismissal of her suggestion, but then he held out a hand and said:

"That's... enough for now, Hanabi. Continue practicing your forms in here," he told the girl (and now that Kurenai had her name, she no longer had to keep mentally referring to Hanabi as _'the girl'_). "I will speak with Yuuhi-san outside."

Hiashi then turned and followed Kurenai out the nearby door, making the woman wonder briefly why he had even led her inside in the first place. Before she could ponder further on the matter, however, she heard a strangled yelp from behind her.

The sound caught her off guard, and a ninja caught off guard was a very dangerous thing.

Reacting immediately, Kurenai had her hands up and ready to start weaving seals, over a decade of combat experience preparing the woman to leap into action at the drop of a hat. Crimson eyes for which she had been named flicked intently over her surroundings, every fiber of the woman's being tensed and ready to fight.

What she saw made her blink owlishly. Once, twice, three times. She stared blankly at the clan head of the Hyuuga, dropping stiffly and disbelievingly out of her combat stance.

Weakly, Kurenai shook her head.

Hiashi Hyuuga was halfway up the dojo wall, looking like a princess who had just seen a mouse or a poisonous viper. This hardened war veteran and elite jounin-class shinobi, a man renowned far and wide for his visual prowess and martial skill, was staring bug eyed, _petrified_, at the cutest and most harmless thing Kurenai had ever seen.

"Hello, father," said Hinata Hyuuga, greeting Hiashi with the sweetest of grins. "Kurenai-sensei," was added as an afterthought, the girl nodding politely in said woman's direction.

Kurenai blinked again.

She looked from Hiashi, to Hinata, to Hiashi again.

"...Did I miss something?" she said, feeling like she had been left completely out of the loop.

Hinata smiled, and waved a hand dismissively.

"Oh, it was nothing, sensei," she said cheerfully. "Just an unfortunate misunderstanding. I assure you it won't happen again."

She bowed towards her father, then, who was still cowering and clinging to the wall like some kind of silky-haired spider. It seemed the last part of that statement was addressed as much to Hiashi as to her.

Kurenai was at a loss.

"Uh... what?" she said. "Er. So, um... do I have your permission, Hiashi-san?"

The Hyuuga clan head blushed, looking distinctly flustered, and he cleared his throat (though he didn't come down from the wall).

"Y-Yes, of course," he said, audibly trying to maintain his composure. "Do whatever you wish. I give you full clearance to supervise my daughter's training." He then paused. "Er, unless, of course, you would like to say otherwise, Hinata...?"

He glanced nervously at the girl, who replied with a soft smile and short shake of her head.

"No," she said. "I will be happy to study under Kurenai-sensei and broaden my horizons."

Hiashi nodded nervously.

"Well, okay then!" he said almost a little too eagerly. "That's that. Ahem, er... yes, feel free to go along. I'm sure your teammates are waiting for you, um, _dear_."

Hinata smiled a little wider, and nodded.

"Thank you very much, father," she said with another bow, before turning to Kurenai. "Well, then. Shall we be off, Kurenai-sensei?"

The genjutsu expert nodded dumbly, bemused.

Hinata clapped her hands together gently, and nodded, before quietly turning and walking off. Kurenai, at a loss for words, followed the girl to the training grounds where Shino and Kiba would probably be waiting soon enough for their first official mission.

Kurenai felt like she would be happy to pitch in.

D-ranks were mind numbingly dull, but at least they made _sense_.

* * *

><p>"596-03," Naruto said.<p>

His teammates stared at him blankly.

"...Eh?" said Sakura.

"A delivery ninja," the blond elaborated. "He's someone I... uh, _met_ in the past. Er, future." He frowned. "...other timeline?" A pause. "Yeah, let's go with that."

"What would you need a delivery ninja for?" Sasuke inquired, looking a touch curious. "I don't recall you ever using such services during your tenure as hokage..."

Naruto averted his gaze, looking distinctly sheepish.

"Umm... well, let's just say that me and Pervy Sage kinda got ourselves blacklisted by them during our training trip. Those guys don't mess around when it comes to their 'no-ship' list."

Sakura blinked.

"Oh, I think I heard about that... it's the same reason you wound up taking on Jiraiya-sama's mantle as author of the Icha Icha series, right?" the pinkette said.

"I still can't believe you read that... _smut_," Sasuke added in a mutter, rolling his eyes.

Sakura shrugged.

"It's very entertaining smut," she said flippantly. "Say what you will about his research methods, but Jiraiya-sama knew how to write an engaging novel."

"More's the pity he never managed to get an audience outside of that thinly-veiled porn," Naruto sighed. "I would've loved to see a sequel to his _Legend of a Gutsy Ninja_..."

He shook his head, then, and waved a hand as if to physically dismiss this particular tangent.

"But, anyways... my point is, I _can_ use their services now, since..." he blushed. "Ahem, _that incident_ never happened, now." He gave Sasuke a meaningful look. "Seeing as how _some of us_ have already gone ahead and started changing shit... I figure I might as well throw caution to the wind."

"What's the worst that could happen, right?" Sasuke drawled.

Sakura nodded.

"I wonder what you have in mind, though... _Hokage-sama?_"

Sasuke smirked, catching onto his wife's distinctly obeisant tone.

There was only one reason Sakura would speak so deferentially to their teammate, and that was if she wanted something from him. Last time she called Naruto _hokage-sama_, the medic ninja corps had experienced a four-fold increase in funding.

It had only been until the other departments raised a stink over the obvious favoritism, but still that one sentence had afforded the hospital several much-needed upgrades and new pieces of equipment. Naruto may have long ago grown out of his precocious crush on Sakura, but he still had something of a soft spot for the woman.

The Honorable Lord Seventh chuckled nervously, puffing up visibly at Sakura's remark. His cheeks pinkened, and he sheepishly scratched the back of his neck.

"Gee, Sakura, it always sounds so flattering when you call me that~" he chirped, looking quite giddy. "But, well... I guess I _have_ wondered what it might have been like if I could have found some way to reach out to certain people earlier. Especially knowing what I know now..."

His eyes twinkled, and Sasuke couldn't help but get a shiver down his spine. He knew this look all too well.

Shikamaru had once said that there was nothing more dangerous than an idiot with an idea. And the couple of idiots standing before him were hands down two of the most dangerous people on the face of the earth.

"It would be _very_ convenient to have Tsunade-sama back in the village," Sakura said faux-offhandedly, batting her eyelashes at Naruto in an almost sickeningly cute fashion. "And she IS family of yours, after all..."

Sasuke hummed thoughtfully. He scratched his chin as though stroking an imaginary beard, a spark of slightest mischief in the depths of his eyes.

"My brother is still alive," he said, making it out as though he were just muttering this absentmindedly. "And Danzo is still kicking around, kicking puppies and all that."

Naruto grinned.

"That's one person I regret not being able to get to before he kicked the bucket," he remarked. "It seems a real shame that such undying conviction should have been wasted on his own selfish machinations..."

Sakura smirked.

"You have a plan," she observed.

"I wouldn't call it a _plan_..." Naruto replied. "More like a few crazy, half-baked ideas."

Sasuke laughed.

"That's our hokage..." he drawled.

Naruto puffed up proudly, and Sakura giggled.

"First things first, though," the pinkette remarked. "We should probably get to the training grounds. Today's the day of the bell test, and it's getting close to when Kakashi-sensei should arrive."

Sasuke and Naruto shared a look.

They grinned, a shared thought passing between them.

_Payback time_.

* * *

><p>AN: Why would Naruto and Sasuke want payback on Kakashi, you ask? Well, let's just say... _chuunin exams_ (and I don't mean the story arc!) ;P

Also, Kurenai has no idea what the hell is going on, and the Hyuuga are absolutely terrified of cute little Hinata. XD

And I know I should probably work on the next chapter of _Unbiased_, or any number of my other things that haven't been updated in ages, but this fic is getting loads more feedback than just about any other fic I have done, non-smut OR smut, and is still really fun and easy to write.

Woke up at 5:30 this morning, btw, and am feeling dead on my feet.

YAAAWWN.

**Updated:** 12-6-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	4. We Wanna Rock

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Kakashi Hatake was many things. An elite jounin, a child prodigy, the sole surviving student of the Yellow Flash. He was the only person outside the Uchiha clan to ever master the sharingan, a former ANBU Black Ops captain, and the son of the White Fang.<p>

To call him a genius would be an understatement. He held the record for earliest genin promotion in the history of the Hidden Leaf, and had become a chuunin at an even younger age than the Legendary Sannin. By the time he was the age of these recent academy graduates, he had already earned his place among the village elite and proven himself qualified to serve as a jounin.

He was the famed Sharingan Kakashi, who was said to have penetrated and copied over a thousand different spells and illusions. He was one of the very best shinobi in the Leaf, by some people considered to be a living legend in his own right.

And he was still in his prime, still growing and improving.

So perhaps he held his prospective students to an unrealistically high standard. Maybe it wasn't fair of him to have so harshly failed every genin squad he'd thus far been saddled with. But Kakashi could still remember the bloodstained tragedy his own team had become, and survivor's guilt was nothing to sneeze at.

Kakashi was not what you would call a well-adjusted individual. He had more emotional baggage than a luxury cruise for recovering alcoholics, enough eccentricities and neuroses to send lesser men straight into a white padded cell. For a long time, the only thing that kept him getting up in the morning was sheer force of habit.

By civilian standards, he would be considered an unstable basket case.

By ex-Black Ops standards, he was only a little below the curve.

That was _not_ a career generally conducive to cultivating a healthy psyche. People like Tenzo and Yugao were more the exception than the rule: most turned out like Kakashi, or like Danzo. The rest either burned out, dropped out, or went rogue. Even Itachi Uchiha had really only been exceptional in the _scale_ of his breakdown.

...well, that, and the **suddenness** of it.

But there was a good reason most people knew the _ansatsu senjutsu tokushu butai_ as "ANBU" – they were the dark side of the shinobi forces, doing all of the dirty, unethical, and even downright _illegal_ work that most people thought of when they thought "ninja".

Honestly, Kakashi would not wish such a career path on his worst enemy. It was miserable, demanding, and unrewarding work. Even the staggeringly high pay of frequent S-rank missions was hardly worth the trauma and emotional scarring.

He was one of the last people who should have been entrusted with cultivating the next generation of Leaf shinobi. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to repeatedly try and saddle an ex-ANBU captain like _him_ with a genin team clearly needed their head examined.

That was Kakashi's opinion, at least.

But still, as he neared the training grounds where the Lord Third's latest attempt at getting him to either overcome his emotional baggage or at least pass on some of his knowledge to the next generation were no doubt impatiently awaiting his arrival, the Copy Ninja could not help but mentally grumble various imprecations against the hokage and his advisors.

_Damn you, Sandaime..._ he thought darkly, his one visible eye narrowed, expression hard and stony._ You'd better keep a close eye on that special edition Icha Icha in your lower right hand desk drawer... it would be a _shame_ if anything happened to it._

Genius shinobi or not, he was not above plotting petty revenge.

* * *

><p>Kakashi stared when he finally arrived at the training grounds. Of all the things he had been anticipating, he had not expected <em>this<em>.

His three prospective students were sitting together before the training posts, amicably chatting and snacking. Each of them had a bento box in their lap and a smile on their face. They were talking like old friends, discussing subjects trivial and meaningful alike.

Not only had they completely disregarded his very ominous warning to not eat any breakfast, but they were visibly getting along quite well.

Maybe one of them had actually bothered to do their research?

Kakashi blinked, then, noticing that Sakura had apparently gotten herself a haircut. The academy photos showed her with long hair that bordered on blatantly impractical for a ninja as young and inexperienced as her, but the girl sitting on Naruto's right had her tresses cut sensibly short.

_Huh. So she's gotten herself a haircut? _

_...Not like that will make much of a difference, of course._

A more optimistic man might have taken heart at this, and felt a slight twinge of hopefulness that the girl would prove herself as a dedicated kunoichi.

Kakashi wasn't feeling half as generous.

Next he eyed Naruto, his sensei's son, and the vessel of the kyuubi. A part of Kakashi felt a tiny flicker of guilt at not going out of his way to try and connect with the boy before now, but the rest of him deadpanned that a neurotic, emotionally scarred ANBU captain wouldn't have exactly been the best influence for a young, attention-starved orphan.

Looking closely, however, Kakashi noted that the boy seemed a little quieter than yesterday. He was less noisy, less demanding for people to focus on him. There was something mellower in his demeanor, less of a pup's yapping in his words. It was like he no longer felt the need to repeatedly and vehemently assert his existence with every word to leave his mouth.

Perhaps graduating the academy had soothed some of the lad's insecurities. Maybe Naruto believed that he was finally being acknowledged as a true shinobi, and that people would finally begin to accept him for who he was.

_Or maybe he just wore himself out yammering away at his teammates all morning,_ Kakashi thought critically, before turning his attention over to the third member of the squad.

One thing was immediately apparent.

A beat.

Kakashi stared at the stump of Sasuke Uchiha's left arm.

"Ah," the silver-haired shinobi blurted out, blinking owlishly. "Hello, then. What happened to your arm?"

Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke did not look surprised by the sound of his voice.

Hm.

Although they hadn't acknowledged his arrival, they _did_ seem to know he was there. Not too surprising, since he hadn't really been erasing his presence, but the fact that they didn't respond in any way to his arrival was mildly perplexing.

Late or not, he was their commanding officer. It wasn't as though he expected matching salutes and a chorused _"Sir!"_, but the absence of even a mutinous grumble at being made to wait for so long did seem rather uncharacteristic for at least two of these kids.

That aside, however, the fact that the rookie of the year was visibly lacking one of his arms was more pressing in Kakashi's mind, if only for how unexpected it was. He hadn't heard anything about the kid losing a limb, and he was pretty sure that wasn't something the Lord Third would have glossed over in his briefing.

Had the boy had a training accident after their meeting yesterday?

Such things were not unheard of, even with the best of ninja, and an unsupervised academy student trying out a jutsu beyond his skill level could certainly do some serious damage to himself. The timing was rather unfortunate, though.

Before Kakashi could continue further on into a mental spiel about all the ways that an orphaned academy graduate with a missing limb could get totally fucked over by the system, however, Sasuke languidly turned his head to meet the Copy Ninja's eye.

The boy's expression was inscrutably deadpan.

"I fell down the stairs," was Sasuke's blithe response.

Kakashi blinked again.

"Oh. I see," he said lamely.

It was all he _could_ say, really.

How the hell was a person supposed to respond to something like that? It was obviously a lie, but calling the kid out on it wouldn't really accomplish anything. Not if he was still stubborn enough to show up for his genin test.

The facepalming which ensued on Sakura and Naruto's parts did not escape Kakashi's notice, either. They probably knew the truth of the matter, or else could guess it well enough.

Kakashi shook his head.

"Well, I guess I won't bore you by saying you should seriously consider a career change..." he drawled, "...but don't think I'll go easy on you just because you're a cripple, either."

He noticed the kid's eye twitch.

Ah. A sore spot, was it?

"Don't think _we'll_ go easy on you just because it's three against one," Sasuke replied with a sharp look, his tone as cool as ice.

Kakashi's visible eye crinkled, and he let out a laugh.

"My, my... It's nice that you're confident of your chances," he remarked, waving a hand dismissively. "But I haven't even explained the details of this survival exercise yet." He flicked an eye over the bento lunches the three were finishing up. "...And I'm a little surprised you three didn't heed my warning, by the way."

Sakura shrugged, closing her empty lunchbox.

"Better to face a difficult mission properly nourished," she quipped. "It would hardly be very professional to let _nerves_ keep us from eating."

"I see. Aren't _you_ the clever one," Kakashi commented, amusedly stroking his chin through his mask. "Let's hope that shrewdness doesn't backfire on you, hm?"

He took a pair of bells from his pocket, then, his expression going neutral.

"Now, about your test... Can you guess what we're going to do with these?" he drawled, flicking his wrist to ring the little bells.

Naruto put the lid on his bento box, and shot a lazy glance at the petite ornaments.

"Take those bells from you?" he guessed, making a show of stifling a yawn. "Easy as cake."

Kakashi's eye twitched. He let out a small huff.

"Well, _yes_. You WILL have to take these bells from me," he said, the tiniest hint of annoyance momentarily creeping into his tone. He'd had a whole monologue and everything ready to put the fear of god in these little greenhorns, but they kept taking the wind out of his sails...

"And anyone who doesn't get a bell will be sent back to the academy, I'm sure," Sasuke droned, sounding far too bored to actually be discussing the possibility of being flunked and forced to start his education all over again.

Kakashi was silent for a moment. His eye twitched twice this time.

He nodded, then, after a brief pause.

"...yes. Yes, they will. And you know what else?" he said, sounding much more cheerful than was safe. "You have only an hour to do it."

Sakura chuckled. "That long?" she said. "You must really not have a very high opinion of us."

A dangerous gleam came into her eyes. For a second, Kakashi could have sworn that he saw her _smirk_.

Naruto clapped his hands once, and hopped to his feet with a grunt.

"That's something we'll have to remedy," the blond commented, grinning in a way that reminded Kakashi a little too much of the late Kushina. "It wouldn't do for him to doubt his students' capabilities, after all."

Cerulean orbs flashed, as much amusement as determination. Naruto's smile showed far too many teeth as he raised his hands up to chest height, holding out a fist to either of his teammates.

Sasuke smirked at the whiskered prankster. He bumped fists, matching Naruto's left hand with his right. Then he closed his eyes.

Sakura mirrored Sasuke's gesture, bumping Naruto's other fist and closing her own eyes. She had a frightening grin on her face.

For a second, everything was still.

* * *

><p><em>"What."<em>

_A Naruto in his late teens stared disbelievingly at an older, sharingan-less Kakashi. Standing next to him was a one-armed Sasuke, who looked distinctly ruffled._

_"You heard me," Kakashi drawled, a slightest wrinkling around his eyes betraying the amused tilt of his lips. "Neither of you was ever officially promoted beyond genin rank."_

_Naruto's face reddened, and he spluttered. _

_"Oh, come on!" he protested. "That's bullshit, sensei! Are you seriously gonna tell me that __**saving the whole damn world**__ wasn't worth a field promotion?!"_

_Kakashi shrugged, as though he had no say in the matter and was just relaying this unfortunate news to the pair (which all three present knew was NOT the case)._

_"What can I say? The paperwork never went through."_

_Sasuke's eye twitched._

_"You know, I __**was**__ promoted to chuunin rank in Oto..."_

_Naruto glowered at his friend, annoyed._

_"And what happens in Oto stays in Oto," Kakashi quipped. "You're a Leaf ninja now, again, and that means you're back to the rank you had before your... ahem, _desertion_."_

_Sasuke flinched. His fingers curled into a fist._

_"Are you seriously telling us that we have to retake the chuunin exams?" Naruto asked, looking highly exasperated._

_Kakashi smiled at his two male students._

_"Yes," he said cheerfully._

* * *

><p>Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura's eyes snapped open again a second later.<p>

Chunks of grassy turf began to fly up around the three, the ground trembling at their feet. Waves washed away from them on the surface of the nearby pond, completely defying all conventional logic. The surrounding trees swayed and cracked, as though buffeted by a frightful gale.

Kakashi blinked. The little bit of his face that was actually visible looked distinctly pale.

"...eh?"

Sakura grinned, and pulled her fist apart from Naruto's. Her eyes gleamed with an unholy light, and she shifted her legs.

"You know the plan?" Naruto said.

Sasuke and Sakura nodded. The former separated his fist from Naruto's, raising his hand in the seal of confrontation.

"Kick his ass, get the bells," Sasuke drawled. "Nice and simple. I don't even need anything fancy for this."

Sakura grinned, and hummed her agreement.

"Not much call for a medic yet, either," she remarked. "But this _is_ about showing teamwork."

Naruto nodded, and clapped his hands together.

"Scatter!" he barked.

All three of them blurred, and vanished. Kakashi blinked again, quite dumbstruck.

_...I have a bad feeling about this,_ he mused to himself.

A second later, his instincts were screaming at him to MOVE, and his body jerked back on paranoid reflex. He saw a flicker of pink out of the corner of his eye, and the ground where he had just been standing burst apart, compacted turf buckling and splitting. Chunks of soil ripped through the air, pelting Kakashi with grass and dirt.

Sakura dislodged her fist from the center of a small impact crater. She had a savage grin on her face.

"Lesson number one," the girl said all too sweetly, absentmindedly brushing a bit of soil from her knuckles. "_Taijutsu._"

Kakashi stared.

"Wha...?" he managed to intelligently say, before being forced to sidestep a vicious straight thrust from the girl's fist.

A rip appeared in his flak vest, even though the punch missed him by a good several inches.

Kakashi felt a bead of nervous sweat trickle down past his eye.

Sakura spun, and brought her leg around in a low sweep. Kakashi just barely jumped over it, and he heard a small tree fall over several meters away in an event he _hoped to high heavens_ had nothing to do with the girl's kick.

A small fist rocketed up towards his abdomen, then, and the log that took the Copy Ninja's place exploded into a sizable cloud of sawdust.

"Oh? Replacement jutsu. How very _droll_, sensei."

Sakura smirked, and her eyes flicked over to a seemingly inconspicuous bit of foliage in the surrounding forest. She cracked her knuckles ominously.

Kakashi, who had replaced himself with the brave log that was now floating through the air in puffs of infinitely fine particulate matter, mentally swore when he realized the girl was looking right at him.

Briefly, the man wondered if it wouldn't be prudent to uncover Obito's sharingan. Relatedly, he also wondered _what the hell_ they were teaching kids at the academy these days. Was somebody trying to get back at him for failing all those other teams?

Logically, there was no way a fresh academy graduate should have been able to boast that kind of speed and power, but logic seemed to have called in sick today. Kakashi was starting to feel a bit numb, and not just from Sakura's barely-missed punches.

He was thus only _marginally_ horrified when the girl in question grinned wider than ever, cocked her fist back, and—

Kakashi would later attest that, no matter what his students may say, he absolutely DID NOT scream like a little girl when Sakura Haruno _somehow_ managed to level a full three acres of woodland just by punching at the air in his general direction.

This was not just saving face, either. He didn't have enough breath left in him to even whisper after the first shockwave hit, and only through a quick and frantic application of the art of subterranean locomotion was he able to avoid being crushed under several tons of timber.

Just to be safe, he tunneled _real_ deep. You know, in case Sakura decided to punch the ground again.

_Okay, Kakashi,_ he thought to himself. _Maybe the girl is some kind of freak mini-Tsunade, and maybe you're in shock and unable to properly assess the situation. But you're a jounin, and their sensei. You have to get your head in the game and show these little genin what's what._

Easier said than done, a more bitter part of the man longed to reply. But in terms of sanity Kakashi drew the line at holding literal conversations with himself. So, instead, he grit his teeth, took a deep breath, and—

Felt a kunai nick his shoulder. Right through his flak vest.

Also, several meters of rock and soil.

_Well then._

Another kunai came down through the earth, barely missing his face. Even with his sharingan still covered, it was hardly a feat of brilliance to deduce that lightning natured chakra was probably being channeled through the knives. He could feel his hair stand up on end when it passed.

Deciding that valor was, in this case, the better part of discretion, Kakashi reluctantly returned to the surface, narrowly avoiding a few more lighting kunai.

The second he could feel the sun on his face once again, the hound summoner found himself eye-to-eye with very curious looking sharingan. Rather than the usual one, two, or three tomoe, it had a strange pattern in red and black, almost like something you might see in a gothic kaleidoscope.

"Lesson number two," came Sasuke's half bored, half vindictive tone. "_Genjutsu_."

All at once, EVERYTHING was in shades of red and black. Kakashi found himself in vaguely familiar surroundings, sitting behind a desk at the academy. The other seats were all filled with Sasuke doppelgängers, and an unfamiliar chuunin stood at the front of the classroom, droning on about some topic or other.

Kakashi blinked sleepily, frowning underneath his cloth mask. His legs were jammed most uncomfortably under the desk, the seats far too small for a grown man. Judging by the contents of the chalkboard, the subject matter being covered was also similarly well beneath him.

Tediously trivial.

It was a dreadfully mundane illusion, aside from the starkly dichromatic surroundings. The chuunin instructor continued to prattle monotonously on, completely uncaring that one of his students was a grown up, and a **jounin**.

Boring or not, however, this was still a genjutsu, and he was virtually defenseless while trapped within it. Also, he had never liked sitting in a classroom. It was a big part of the reason he'd pushed to graduate as early as he did.

Concentrating, Kakashi brought his hands up into a seal. He exhaled sharply, simultaneously flaring and scrambling his chakra.

_Kai_.

...nothing happened.

Kakashi frowned.

"Tricky little buggers..." he muttered, before bringing a hand up to his forehead protector. "I guess I'll have to quit holding back, then."

He lifted the hitai-ate from over his left eye, exposing a fully matured three comma sharingan.

A beat.

Kakashi stared blankly at the illusion... which his sharingan was seemingly _unable_ to penetrate. He saw his surroundings exactly as he would have expected to see them, if he were actually sitting in a classroom, even with the altered perception afforded to him by Obito's eye.

Well then. That much, at least, made a little sense.

Only someone who knew what the world looked like through a sharingan could create a genjutsu that could fool those eyes. Otherwise, it would be like a colorblind person trying to craft an illusion capable of fooling people who could actually distinguish between red and blue.

And unfortunately for Kakashi, Sasuke was neither colorblind nor lacking in genjutsu proficiency.

The lecture carried on, and Kakashi quickly ran himself ragged trying to figure out some way to escape his prospective student's illusion. Time lost all meaning as the instructor droned on and on, never running out of mind-numbingly _boring_ subject matter to discuss.

Six hours into the illusion, one quarter of a second had passed in real time.

Sasuke chose then to release the genjutsu, not quite wanting to render the man before him outright comatose.

For a moment, Kakashi was dazed. Then he blinked, and stared at the Uchiha for a fraction of a second.

Cursing, he sprang away. A tactical retreat, ostensibly.

In his hurry, Kakashi failed to notice the bell dangling from Sasuke's hand.

* * *

><p><em>"Do you think you will need to borrow any of my chakra for this, Naruto?"<em>

Kurama's voice rumbled in the back of the blond's mind.

He could sense their target approaching, clearly dumbstruck and frazzled. Sakura was closing in on their location, too, maybe about thirty seconds from intercept. Sasuke was hanging back, for now.

Naruto shrugged, grinning under the cover of a bush.

_Nah. We just wanna knock him around a little... not send him into the ICU._

This response elicited something between a chuckle and a yawn from the lazy old kyuubi.

_"I see. Wake me up when something interesting happens, then, won't you?"_

Naruto nodded, more out of habit than any need to do so when communicating with the Nine-Tailed Fox inside his mind.

_Yeah, sure. I will,_ he promised.

Then, with a wicked grin, Naruto willed three shadow clones into existence above his head. A trio of kage bunshin leaped down from the canopy, shouting raucously and immediately catching their target's attention.

"Kick his ass!" one shouted.

"Ichiraku banzai!" cried the second.

"Believe it!" the third crowed.

They landed right in front of the jounin, and charged. Their guards were wide open, taijutsu stances horrendously sloppy. Kakashi's hands were a blur. He effortlessly dispatched the three clones, stunning each one with short, quick, nonlethal taijutsu strikes.

Nearly as one, the clones burst, vanishing in puffs of white smoke.

Kakashi shook his head and tutted in disappointment, seeming to relax slightly now that he was in more familiar territory.

"What a shame," the man drawled. "Compared to the showing Sasuke and Sakura have made... it looks like _you'll_ be the one sent back to the academy, Naruto."

It was a bluff, of course. This test was an all-or-nothing deal. Kakashi's intention was to test them as a team, not as individuals. If they couldn't set aside their differences and work together, then they would fail no matter how well they did.

Naruto conjured up six more shadow clones, and had them attack in the same strategy as the previous three. Kakashi scowled, and dispelled these ones just as effortlessly.

"Really, Naruto... this is just a disappointing showing," the man drawled, visibly frowning. _What are you three up to...?_

As if in answer to his unspoken question, Sakura burst into the clearing, screaming bloody murder. Kakashi's eyes nearly bugged out of his head.

Had Naruto just been stalling him...?

"_**SHANNARO!**_" the pinkette roared, cocking a fist back as she flew straight at the jounin.

Kakashi yelped – actually _yelped_ – and ducked hurriedly out of the girl's way. She missed him by scarce inches, another sizable rip appearing in the man's flak vest. The hound summoner winced, looking like he might as well have been slugged with a direct hit from an ironclad fist.

Naruto grinned.

"NOW!" he cried, leaping out of the bush. His hands blurred through a number of seals. "Time for lesson number three, Kaka-sensei!" He clapped his palms together, and the forest _shifted_ under the weight of his chakra. "_Ninjutsu!_"

There was a flash of light. The ground shuddered and groaned beneath Kakashi's feet.

"_**Sexy Style: Icha Icha Harem Jutsu!**_"

Kakashi blinked.

The smoke cleared.

He saw that he was surrounded by dozens of gorgeous, scantily clad women. Notably, every last one of them resembled one heroine or another from the closet pervert's favorite book series. From sexy libarian Yukina, to sensual innkeeper Mitusba, to shy but secretly adventurous Akane, and of course the dark, emotionless ninja beauty, Ibuki.

Every last detail was absolutely perfect. From the most obvious repeated descriptors to the subtlest inferred qualities, not one thing was missing or different from Kakashi's mental category. The girls looked _exactly_ as he had always imagined them, and every last one was eyeing him up and down in a way that said they _liked_ what they saw.

In an instant, the Copy Ninja was swamped. Gorgeous woman identical to the many sexy heroines of his favorite series of novels threw themselves at him, cooing and repeating many of their cutest or most suggestive lines from the books.

_"Oh, darling... Do you want dinner, a bath... or ME~?"_

_"I-It's not like I'm doing this 'cause I _want_ to... B-BAKA!"_

_"Is that a kunai in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"_

Jiraiya had many talents.

Writing creative dialogue was not one of them.

Now, normally, a technique like Naruto's sexy jutsu would have minimal effect on Kakashi. The man had plenty of _real_ women all but throwing themselves at him everywhere he went, after all. He was all but desensitized to the female form.

This, on the other hand...? This was something else _entirely_.

Everyone had their weakness. Everyone had their price. Everyone had their fetish.

Icha Icha was Kakashi's.

The ensuing fountain of blood was strong enough to punch straight through the man's mask, flinging him backwards through the forest.

"YOU PAAAASS!" Kakashi Hatake exclaimed with a tear in his eye.

Seconds later, the horde of half naked smut heroines descended upon him. They were absolutely merciless.

Naruto (the original) turned to grin at Sakura. The pinkette smirked back at him, dangling a bell from her fist. Sasuke chose then to hop down from the branches overhead, idly fiddling with the bell in his hand.

"I'm _surrounded_ by perverts," he groused, espying the slight trickle of blood on Sakura's upper lip.

The pinkette shrugged.

"Kakashi-sensei is very handsome under that mask of his," she said flippantly. "...and Naruto's sexy jutsu is quite compelling, too."

Naruto laughed, looking smug. Sasuke rolled his eyes, and shook his head.

"Ah, whatever," he muttered. Turning to Naruto, he said, "Hey. Did you ever get a hold of that delivery ninja?"

Naruto glanced from the continuing carnage of his Icha Icha Harem Jutsu, which also happened to be the name of his latest installment in the _Icha Icha_ series, ghostwritten by Konohamaru.

"Yeah," he said. "I gave him the letters and the instructions. We ought to be getting RSVPs back sometime between now and... well, when the Wave mission started, last time."

Sasuke nodded, looking satisfied.

Sakura seemed completely incapable of tearing her eyes away from the Lord Seventh's most fearsome jutsu behind the Ultra Massive Bijuudama Rasenshuriken Omni-Elemental Barrage.

Mark Seven.

Kakashi, for his part, was CONVINCED that he had died and gone straight to Icha Icha heaven.

_Which he was perv-ectly okay with._

* * *

><p>AN: Actually went back and watched the first few episodes of the original _Naruto _anime before I finished this chapter. Comedy is one of the hardest things to write, and comedic fight scenes even moreso, but the bell test is a hallmark of Naruto fanfiction retellings, and I wanted to make it sufficiently humorous and one-sided without just spamming SUSANOO and BIJUU MODE.

(That's something I plan to save for _later_.)

And honestly, sexy jutsu is a timeless hallmark of the Naruto series, in my humble opinion. It's honestly one of the most original special attacks in Shonen, when you think about it.

How many other malestream anime have their protagonists _weaponizing fanservice?_ XD

...I meant mainstream.

Malestream sounds vaguely obscene.

BAKA

_(really should not write when tired/sleep deprived)_

**Updated:** 12-10-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	5. Giggles and Garbage

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Hinata Uzumaki née Hyuuga dearly loved her family. This statement was not exclusive to her husband and children, or even to just those members of the Hyuuga clan who had been kind to her as a child. Family was family.<p>

Even the most distant relatives on her husband's side were as dear to her as siblings. Karin Hozuki née Uzumaki was like a sister-in-law to Hinata, and she was as close to the woman as she was to her own sister. Karui Akimichi was practically a cousin. The daughter of Priestess Shion was like a niece.

The Hyuuga family tree was very closely knit, even for all of the bad blood between its branches. Hinata was accustomed through long use to reckoning even far-flung relations as "kin", as the Hyuuga clan – for how large as it was – kept among its own as often as not. The fact that her husband's clan had all but disintegrated and scattered to the four corners of the earth _decades_ ago did not deter Hinata from warmly greeting even his most distantly removed relatives as family.

She was a kind, warm-hearted, understanding sort of woman. Even though her childhood had not always been the happiest or most fortunate, she firmly believed in family before all else. This was why she could greet someone like the Hoshikage as _niisama_, just because the man's mother had carried a few drops of Uzumaki blood within her veins.

Hinata loved her family dearly.

This statement did not exclude her father.

Oh, he had been a hard man, a stern disciplinarian who would not hesitate to berate her for even the slightest mistakes while training. Hiashi Hyuuga had never been a terribly expressive individual, and had rarely shown any kind of recognizable affection to his children in their youth. A less forgiving woman than Hinata would not hesitate to begrudge the man his harsh training and critical attitude.

But Hinata loved him all the same. Hiashi was her father, and not a bad person. As a parent herself, she could now understand the anxiety and the worry, the fear of not being _ready_ to raise a child. She had faced many of the pitfalls herself, been forced to overcome numerous tribulations as a mother of two.

Her father had never hated her. No, it had been a very long time indeed since Hinata had feared as much. He loved both of his daughters, and wanted only the best for them. As the head of a ninja clan, that meant doing everything he could to make his girls strong, to impart upon them the resolve necessary to someday lead the family, and fighting ability to keep them alive.

Hinata did not resent her father for calling her weak as a child, or for pushing her so hard to _improve_. Those words had hurt, of course, and the stress had driven her to withdraw further and further into herself, but she knew that he had been doing no different for her than his father had done for him and his brother.

If anything, Hiashi's methods had been _lenient_ by the standards of traditional shinobi discipline. He had never struck her outside of a spar, or pushed her too far past her limits. He was not an outwardly affectionate man, but neither had he ever been abusive.

When it had become seemingly clear to him that Hinata would likely never be able to completely discard her kind nature, or to overcome her hesitation and self doubt, he had simply given up and turned his attentions to the more promising Hanabi. This may have dismayed Hinata when she was young, but the person she was now could understand his reasoning.

She did not resent the man, or begrudge him that long-past dismissal of her potential. Hinata Uzumaki was a mature, grown woman – she had overcome those insecurities many years ago. She and her father had reconciled when she was still in her teens, and now she was thirty-five years old: a mother of two academy students.

With a husband like Naruto Uzumaki, it was only natural that Hinata would have long since come to terms with her childhood. Although she was now in a twelve year old body, back when her father's antipathy towards her had been at its peak, from Hinata's perspective she had been at peace with the man for almost twenty years.

She loved her father dearly, and respected him as well.

This did not mean, however, that she could not find amusement in his present fear of her.

Honestly, the whole misunderstanding was actually pretty funny from her perspective. The look on his face when he saw her returning to the manor had nearly made Hinata break out in laughter.

Even now, a quarter of an hour later, she could still feel one or two giggles escape her lips as she thought about her father clinging to dojo's outside wall like the ground had turned into lava. Hiashi hadn't even looked that undignified at his fiftieth birthday party, when one of his older cousins had cracked out some less than flattering baby pictures of the retired clan head.

"Heh... heehee..._snrk_..."

Kiba Inuzuka stared at his female teammate with an odd mixture of confusion and anxiety. Hinata's face was quite a deep shade of red, and her shoulders appeared to be spasming on and off. She looked rather like she was having trouble breathing, too, and was clutching uncharacteristically at her ribs.

"Er... you alright, Hinata?" he ventured, looking uncertainly at the girl.

"Teehee... hahaha... y-yes, I'm f-fine... _heeheehee!_... K-Kiba...kun..."

Shino, from the other side of Hinata, looked askance at the girl.

...Possibly. He might have also been staring at their new jounin sensei's behind.

The sunglasses made it kind of hard to tell where his eyes were actually pointed.

"If I didn't know any better, I would say it almost sounds like she's laughing," the Aburame commented.

"_Laughing?_" Kiba frowned, narrowing his eyes and looking more closely at Hinata's scarlet face and trembling frame. "Huh. Weird. Is that _normal_ for her?"

He looked curiously at Shino, perhaps expecting the insect-user to have a better insight into their female teammate's personality. Kiba had honestly never actually noticed either of them until yesterday, when they'd been stuck on a genin squad together. Those two were not the kind of people who stood out from the crowd.

Shino might have frowned at Kiba's question. It was hard to tell.

"Not that I know of," he said. "It seems to be quite uncharacteristic of her, actually."

Kiba furrowed his brow. He scratched his head.

"So..." he muttered. "What? Has she snapped or something?"

For some unfathomable reason, Hinata's laughter seemed to redouble at this comment.

Kiba stared at the girl, uncertain what to think. Akamaru rode on the boy's head, the small white pup eagerly wagging its tail.

Hinata shook her head, redfaced and trembling.

"N-No, I'm... s-sorry..." She giggled a little more, tears in her eyes. "I-It's nothing, K...Kiba-kun, Shino-kun. It's just... I just remembered a very funny joke. That's all."

Shino seemed to accept this. Kiba cocked an eyebrow suspiciously for a moment, before shrugging and letting it go.

He could buy that.

"I see. Must be one hell of a joke," he commented, stretching boredly.

Hinata's lips twitched.

"Oh, it is. It really is," she said. There was a twinkle of mirth in her eye.

A moment of silence passed between the trio of genin, as they followed Kurenai to the mission center. Kiba watched the clouds go by, and Shino stared fixedly at a point a little ways in front of Hinata, who walked directly behind their new sensei.

They walked down the street to their destination, the building rearing up ahead of them. Ninja of various ranks came to and fro around them as they drew near to the tower.

Shino hummed thoughtfully.

"I wonder what kind of mission we'll be assigned?" he spoke up, glancing around as they passed in through the door.

Kiba let out a barking laugh, and grinned at his male teammate.

"They'll probably want us to infiltrate some kind of smuggling ring," he confidently declared. "Oh! Or maybe we'll be assigned to guard a princess!"

A beat.

"_Pffffft...!_"

Hinata's face turned an impossible shade of maroon, and her cheeks puffed out. Wide-eyed and shaking, her mouth snapped open, a howling laughter escaping her lips.

"Hahahahaha! Oh, oh _goodness!_ Ahahahaha!"

Kiba and Shino both stared at Hinata.

Quietly, they scooted a couple inches away, unsure how to take this newest hysterical fit.

Kurenai, for her part, was glad that none of the three noticed her own trembling lip, or the tears in her eyes. She herself was only _barely_ restraining her laughter.

It took Hinata several seconds to calm down, and several ninja in the mission center (mostly those acquainted with Hyuuga clan members) were giving her very wary looks. Shino and Kiba continued to stare uncomprehendingly at the girl.

Well, okay, that was mostly Kiba. Shino was still keeping his eye on Kurenai-sensei, for the most part.

The chuunin at the desk got a wicked gleam in his eye when Team Eight walked up to him.

"Ah," he said, glancing at the look of scarcely-suppressed amusement on Kurenai's face, and the trio of fresh-looking genin behind her. "Your first mission?"

Despite herself, Kurenai couldn't help mirroring the man's sadistic grin. Hinata was breathing slow and deep to keep herself from breaking down in giggles again. She felt most unusually giddy, and a part of her wondered if it might not have had something to do with the twelve year old body she was currently inhabiting.

Kiba and Shino were more concerned with the contents of the scroll the clerical-nin handed their sensei. Even the fairly stoic Aburame looked a hair eager for their first official job as shinobi of the Hidden Leaf.

"Well? What's our mission, sensei?" Kiba asked excitedly. "Infiltration? Assassination? Body guard duty?"

Kurenai turned to face her students, an all-too-innocently sweet smile on her face.

"_Babysitting_," she told them, a trace of sadistic delight in her tone.

Oh, she was going to _relish_ this. If only she had a camera to preserve the looks on their faces for posterity.

Kiba blinked. His face twisted in disbelief and confusion. He looked one part offended, one part irritated, and one part constipated. Even Shino seemed to wilt a fraction of inch.

Hinata beamed, however, the only one of the three to not only look unperturbed by this announcement, but even appear to be downright _pleased_ with their assignment.

"Oh, good!" the girl warmly chirped. "That should be fun."

* * *

><p>"They passed."<p>

Hiruzen Sarutobi, the Lord Third Hokage, looked up from his calligraphy. Smoke curled from his pipe in thin wisps, the slender, finely-crafted instrument shifting between the elderly shinobi's lips.

Kakashi Hatake was standing just outside the threshold of Hiruzen's study, looking oddly pleased despite the ragged state of his uniform. The Sandaime was mildly surprised to note what looked like numerous _claw marks_ in the jounin's flak vest, as well as a few larger rips and tears.

Hiruzen narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, plucking his pipe from his mouth. He exhaled a puff of sweetly pungent smoke, frown lines subtly deepening.

"Did they, now?" he murmured, voice low and raspy. "Hrm. I must admit, that is a pleasant surprise. Iruka seemed quite certain you would fail them."

A strange expression flickered over Kakashi's face for the briefest instant. Less perceptive men wouldn't have even noticed it.

"Iruka, huh... I think I remember him," Kakashi said, his visible eye marginally narrowing. "Their academy instructor, right?"

"Correct," Hiruzen said with a curt nod. "I do believe you're the one who convinced him to make that particular career choice."

"Was I, now?" Kakashi mused. "Well, I don't remember it, but I suppose it could have happened." He shrugged. "Honestly, though, if that guy was actually worried about _those three_ failing my test..."

He trailed off.

Hiruzen noticed a curious mixture of resentment and... _gratitude?_... in the Copy Ninja's voice.

"I'll admit that their team combination is a potentially volatile one," he conceded, "but clearly they managed to pull through spectacularly."

Kakashi gave Hiruzen an eye-smile.

"Oh, no. Not just _pull through_," he said. He shook his head, looking almost torn between swelling pride and petty resentment. "I daresay those three completely DEMOLISHED me. I wasn't able to even lay a finger on them."

The Sandaime blinked, and stared at Kakashi.

After a moment's silence, he frowned.

"...I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me, Lord Hokage. They tore me into pieces and completely trivialized the bell test. I didn't even have to tie one of them to a log." Here, Kakashi paused. "...not that I would have been able to unless they let me, I imagine."

Hiruzen snuffed out his pipe, and he set it aside.

"Kakashi..." he said slowly, giving the man a gimlet eye. "...have you been indulging in any recreational habits I should be aware of? Maybe they aren't _immediately_ poisonous, but there's still a reason that those mushrooms are labeled as highly toxic in the field manual..."

Kakashi shook his head.

"I assure you, Hokage-sama," he said sincerely. "I have not been engaging in the use of _any_ non-prescription opiates, narcotics, or psychotropic substances."

Hiruzen's eyes were still narrowed.

"And yet you were unable to so much as lay a finger on three freshly graduated academy students?" he drawled. The skepiticism was dripping from his tone. "Perhaps you need to be sent back for remedial lessons, yourself, Kakashi."

Kakashi, again, shook his head.

"No, no. You wouldn't be saying that if you'd seen them in action," he insisted, a strange look in his eye.

He glanced pointedly at the Lord Third's crystal ball.

Hiruzen cleared his throat, inconspicuously dabbing a bit of blood away from his nostrils as he recalled a certain impromptu spar that had erupted between Anko and Yugao in the hot springs earlier that day.

"Hrm, yes, well..." he muttered. "They must have set up quite a good number of traps for you in the length of time it took for you to arrive, I do not doubt."

He gave Kakashi a pointed look, silently reiterating a well worn lecture on the distinction between _tolerance_ and _approval_ in regards to the man's customary cunctation. But Kakashi dismissed it with a wave of his hand.

"The only trap they've set on me since I met the three was that eraser Naruto dropped on my head the other day. I don't know what Iruka's been teaching those kids, but the only one of them whose abilities didn't completely baffle me was Naruto."

Kakashi paused.

"...although I do wonder how a minor could come to have such an intimate knowledge regarding the _Icha Icha _series and its heroines..."

Hiruzen sighed, getting the impression that they were getting back into somewhat more familiar ground.

"I see," he muttered. "So it was that... _harem_ _jutsu_ of Naruto's, that did you in?"

Kakashi's smile seemed especially genuine at this comment.

"The boy has a real talent," he said sincerely.

The perverted giggle slipping from the man's mouth, and the visible pinkness in his cheek, only slightly ruined the effect of his words.

Hiruzen once more dabbed at his nose, closing his eyes and trying not to think about the singularly well-endowed female love interests in his favorite student's most (in-)famous series, all clad in nothing but thin wisps of smoke, and lewdly squirming and cooing as they piled on top of him and...

The Sandaime's cheeks darkened noticeably. The tissue in his hand became stained with red.

"Yes... yes, of course," he said distractedly, before weakly shaking his head and discarding the blood drenched tissue. "Well, ah... yes, hrm..._ Ahem_." He cleared his throat. "What about the other two, then?" he inquired, trying to change the topic to something less likely to violently exsanguinate him with certain associated mental images.

Kakashi paused, frowning.

"...well, Sakura leveled a good portion of the forest surrounding the training grounds. She's like a freak mini-Tsunade," he said with a barely repressed shudder. A moment later, he added, almost as an afterthought: "...Oh, and also Sasuke seems to have awakened some strange kind of sharingan."

The Lord Third blinked. A frown tugged at his lips.

"Define _strange_, Kakashi."

"It didn't have a tomoe pattern," Kakashi elaborated. "It looked like... well, I don't know how I'd describe it. It was sort of like..." He gestured vaguely. "Do you know those spyglass sort of toys? The ones with the dials and the twisting shapes that don't actually show what you're looking at..."

Kakashi scowled, visibly wracking his brain for the word.

"It's... well, like... it looked sort of like that, or at least the pattern reminded me of something you might see in one of those... those, uh..." He tapped a finger on his wrist, fidgeting as he tried to recall the word. "You know, it was like..."

Hiruzen narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. He stroked his short beard.

"...Like a kaleidoscope?" he said, venturing a guess.

Kakashi blinked. He snapped his fingers.

"Yes, _that's_ the word!" he said, nodding his head. "Yes. It was like a kaleidoscope, except in only red and black. Do you know anything about that?"

The Sandaime nodded.

"That does sound familiar," he said. "The Lord Second, my mentor and predecessor, did extensive research into the sharingan during the latter part of his life. I might have some of his old papers still lying around somewhere in my personal library."

He gestured for Kakashi to leave, before pausing and getting a thoughtful look.

"Is there anything else you might need to tell me?"

Kakashi paused halfway out the door, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Well, Sasuke's missing an arm," he commented. "Says he fell down the stairs."

Hiruzen blinked.

Then he let out a sigh, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"How troublesome," the Professor muttered.

"Yeah. Tell me about it," Kakashi agreed.

Somewhere in the village, Shikamaru Nara sneezed.

* * *

><p>"Man, twelve year old me was <em>such<em> a slob."

Naruto looked around at his apartment, shaking his head. It was an absolute **pigsty**.

Sasuke and Sakura stood behind the blond, to either side. Both looked around at the apartment, really taking in the messy, filthy state of their friend and teammate's living quarters.

"Right. Like you aren't STILL one," Sasuke drawled, rolling his eyes.

He smirked at Naruto.

The blond scoffed in response, shooting a dark look back over his shoulder.

"Bah. What do _you_ know?" he grumbled.

Sakura looked around appraisingly. She and Sasuke had been in here earlier, of course, but she hadn't really taken the time to take a good look around until now.

She gave a weak shrug, and a lopsided half-smile.

"I don't know..." she murmured. "I wouldn't say it's _that_ bad."

Naruto scratched the back of his neck, and he gave Sakura a sort of grateful look.

"You think so?" he said. "I mean, I know I was just a kid living on my own..."

"Y-Yeah, it's not that bad," Sakura repeated, saying it with a touch less conviction.

Sasuke snorted.

"I've seen landfills with less garbage," he scoffed, wrinkling his nose. "_Please_ tell me you plan on tidying up in here, Naruto."

The blond shrugged.

"Maybe if I have time," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "But I was kinda busy sending out those letters, earlier. You know?"

"Yes, unfortunately," Sasuke muttered. He grimaced at the sight of a half empty cup ramen sitting amongst wrinkled, dirty tissues.

Sakura frowned, placing a hand on her husband's shoulder.

"Now, now, dear," she said, her tone gently remonstrating. "Be polite. That was as much your idea as Naruto's."

"I know, I know," Sasuke sighed, rolling his eyes. "Honestly, woman... between you and our _honorable_ lord hokage, it's a _wonder_ I've manage to stay sane all these years."

"That's assuming an awful lot!" Naruto guffawed, elbowing his friend in the ribs. "Like you aren't already completely cracked." He waggled his eyebrows teasingly.

Sasuke looked like he was an inch away from pouting.

"Bastard," he sniped, but there was no real heat behind the word.

Sakura smiled indulgently, and wrapped an arm around Sasuke's waist. Naruto chuckled, and cleared away a spot on his couch. Garbage and old scrolls were heaped onto the coffee table, and one of the legs was propped up on a stack of ancient, yellowing newspapers.

"This place could really use a woman's touch," the pinkette observed absentmindedly. "Maybe Hinata could help you tidy up?"

"It's like the bachelor pad from hell," Sasuke agreed.

Naruto shrugged, before letting himself plop down on the couch.

"I was a total slob as a kid," he conceded. "But it's not like I'll be inviting people over for dinner parties, or anything."

A sock chose that moment to wriggle its way out from under a stack of ramen cups. Stale and crusty, more brown than white, the article of clothing started crawling off the coffee table. Gurgling hideously, the vile thing flopped onto the floor with an audible grunt.

Naruto pinned it down with a lazily flung kunai, not even looking in the sock's direction as he continued chatting with his teammates.

Sasuke and Sakura spared a mildly disturbed glance toward the still-writhing garment. The bloodcurdling screams were rather disconcerting.

"Naruto," Sasuke said, looking slightly sick. "Please. _Clean your damn apartment_."

Sakura nodded weakly in agreement.

"Y-Yeah... I think we'd _all _rather avoid a repeat of the Boxer Shorts Rebellion," she concurred.

"Or the Curdled Milk Revolt," Sasuke added, his eyes glinting with something like amusement.

Sakura smiled crookedly.

"Oh, yes," she said. "And of course, who can forget the Moldy Toast Assassination Plot?"

"Heavens forbid we have another Stocking Strike," Sasuke said seriously.

"Or a mutant cockroach insurgence," Sakura spoke.

"Ugh, that was _horrible_," Sasuke said with a shudder. "Don't even remind me." He made a face.

Sakura nodded sagely, and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, hon. I'm sure we'll be able to cut it off before it starts," she said. "If it looks like the roaches are about to achieve sentience and assimilate the power of chakra from Naruto's garbage..."

The Seventh Hokage made a very rude gesture.

"_Assholes_," Naruto grumbled, sounding distinctly petulant. "I am SO assigning you each a month of D-ranks when we get back home."

Sasuke and Sakura smiled, and whistled innocently.

* * *

><p>AN: An interesting fact to remember: temperament is heavily influenced by hormone balance, and 35 year old adults do not have the same physiological chemistry as 12/13 year old kids. This _may or may not _have anything to do with the cracky behavior of our main characters.

*Whistles innocently*

Also, I can't be the only one who thinks characters like Shion's mom from the first Shippuden movie, or Natsuhi from the Hoshigakure arc, look like they could have been Uzumaki clan members.

Next chapter MAY OR MAY NOT bring us to the start of the Wave Arc.

**Updated:** 12-14-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤

* * *

><p><em><strong>OMAKE:<strong>_

_**really stupidly vehemently pointless**_

o0o0o0o

_You are hereby cordially invited to an Uzumaki family reunion in the Hidden Leaf Village. As a surviving descendant of the Uzumaki clan, your presence at this event would be greatly appreciated. There will be refreshments, of course, and plenty of festivities. _

_The date has not yet been set, but please RSVP as soon as possible. A second letter will be sent to you when we have finalized the arrangements._

_Please send your reply to the following address._

o0o0o0o

Karin blinked. She turned the scroll over in her hands several times. A recently-acquired Kusagakure forehead protector was lying across her lap.

She frowned, glancing nervously at her teammates. The two older genin seemed unconcerned with the young redhead, busy amusing themselves by poking and prodding at the messily eviscerated corpse of the delivery ninja who had brought her this message.

With only a very faint grimace, Karin turned and started fishing through her things for a brush and scroll.

She was curious, to be honest.

And who knew? Maybe she'd meet actually meet a cute guy over there.

Karin blushed at the thought, and let out the slightest perverted giggle.

o0o0o0o

Karui of Kumogakure took one look at the contents of her letter, before swearing loudly and vehemently.

"_One quarter!_" she snapped at the parchment in her hand. "One measley quarter!"

Omoi and Samui watched their teammate curse at the scroll with expressions of mild worry.

"Is this about that whole Uzumaki thing?" the former wondered.

"Must be," Samui replied blandly. "What else would she be shouting _'one quarter, one quarter!'_ over?"

"Huh. I wonder what's in that letter, then?" Omoi murmured. "If it's got Karui in such a tizzy."

Samui eyed their redheaded teammate, who angrily spared one last glare for the scroll in her hand, before tossing it over her shoulder. Omoi didn't quite manage to duck in time, and he fell backwards over the black and blue form of the unfortunate delivery ninja.

o0o0o0o

Honoka Uzumaki nodded politely to the delivery ninja, smiling as she absentmindedly restrained one of the more temperamental test subjects with a relatively basic A-rank sealing jutsu.

She glanced down at the scroll the courier had passed off to her. It looked to be a message of some sort, and the wax seal was unbroken. There was a mild fuuinjutsu bound to it, one she expected would only open for a specific criteria.

Casually pricking her thumb, Honoka dripped a bit of her blood onto the wax seal, which promptly glowed for a second, before melting away into nothing.

Unfurling the scroll, she began to read.

The contents of the letter surprised her, and she barely even noticed when one of her employers' most recent attempts at creating the ultimate summoned beast broke free from its restraints just long enough to snap up the departing courier ninja in its jaws.

Humming thoughtfully, Honoka started looking for her writing supplies.

o0o0o0o

Konan stood silent and expressionless beside the Deva Path of her lord and comrade. He held a scroll in his hand, one which she had already checked quite thoroughly for traps.

Pain read the message contained within. His face was unreadable.

Several long minutes of silence passed between them.

"...is this some manner of joke?" he muttered at last, lowering the scroll. He glared sternly at the delivery ninja.

Despite the fact that he was being suspended in midair well over a dozen stories from the closely packed streets below, tightly wrapped in a cocoon of explosive notes, the messenger seemed quite unfazed as he politely shook his head.

Pain scowled, and stowed the letter away in the depths of his cloak.

"Dispose of him, Konan," he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

His angel dutifully nodded, and moments later the citizens of Amegakure found themselves cheering on an impromptu fireworks display.

o0o0o0o

_You are hereby cordially invited to an Uchiha family reunion in the Hidden Leaf Village. As a surviving descendant of the Uchiha clan (or unrelated bearer of the sharingan), your presence at this event would be greatly appreciated. There will be refreshments, of course, and plenty of festivities._

_The date has not yet been set, but please RSVP as soon as possible. A second letter will be sent to you when we have finalized the arrangements._

_Please send your reply to the following address._

o0o0o0o

Kakashi blinked, nearly running straight into the delivery ninja who had been standing outside the Sandaime's office.

"Eh?" he intelligently said, still a bit distracted from the talk he'd just had with the hokage.

"A letter for Kakashi Hatake," the courier said, the very picture of professionalism. He presented a scroll from the depths of his mail pouch, and Kakashi accepted it with an owlish blink.

The Copy Ninja dismissed the messenger with a bored wave of his hand, ignoring the slightly put off look on the man's face, and cracked the scroll open as he made his way out of the tower. Taking note of the Uchiha clan seal in the wax, Kakashi flicked his eye over the letter's contents.

It looked like complete gibberish.

Without missing a beat, he uncovered his sharingan.

"Ah. A family reunion...?" he drawled skeptically, seeing that he could now read the letter. A moment passed, and he shrugged. "...Well, I suppose it could be good therapy for the kid."

o0o0o0o

Danzo stood secure and cautious behind a high level barrier jutsu as one of his more disposable agents tested the scroll for traps. A delivery ninja stood off to one side, bound in straps and drooling a little as a mind-jutsu expert scoured the man's brain for any and all intelligence on the Foundation.

Danzo waited patiently as his agent slowly and carefully broke the seal on the scroll. He leaned on his cane, a stony expression on his face.

"Well?" he rasped, his voice coming out more like a growl than anything else.

"It appears to be encrypted," the agent replied blandly, toneless. "Judging by the pattern, I'd say it's probably meant to be read with some manner of doujutsu."

Danzo scowled, and after a moment's thought beckoned for the scroll to be brought over to him. Lowering the barrier and uncovering the sharingan he had quote-unquote _acquired_ from Shisui Uchiha, the head of the Foundation irritably snatched the letter out of his soldier's hand.

If it were possible, his expression became even stonier when he actually read it.

o0o0o0o

Itachi Uchiha hummed thoughtfully as he read the letter in his hands. His brow was subtly furrowed, and a flicker of some unreadable emotion passed over his face.

"Foolish little brother..." he murmured. "Have you forgotten already?"

Kisame glanced curiously at his partner, who was staring holes into that illegible mess of text on the scroll the delivery ninja had handed him.

"Is it anything important, Itachi-san?" he inquired politely.

"Maybe," Itachi answered, sounding pensive. "...it seems I have been invited to a family reunion."

Kisame quirked an eyebrow at this.

"I thought you _killed _all your family," he quipped.

Itachi shrugged in silent reply, and handed a modest roll of bills to the courier-nin, who bowed gratefully before departing.

o0o0o0o

Tobi's eye twitched. He looked from the scroll in his hands to the violently dismembered remains of the delivery ninja who'd had the _gall_ to address him by That Name which he had discarded so many years ago.

He looked back down at the letter, which was addressed to one _Obito Uchiha_. Had he possessed an eye with the _enton_ affinity, the sheer force of his glare would have already combusted the poor scroll into tongues of pitch black flame.

He looked back at the delivery ninja, whom he had so brutally torn apart upon the first mention of that hated name. He felt a heat in his chest, and a pressure behind his eyes. His gut roiled furiously, filled with bile and wrath.

Lifting his mask, Tobi spat fire at the mutilated corpse. Then, for good measure, he undid the zipper on his trousers and emptied his bladder on the ashes.

The letter itself he tore into a number of very tiny pieces.

o0o0o0o


	6. The Land of Waves (life is hell)

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>"Welcome home, dear. How was your mission?"<p>

This was the first thing Naruto heard upon passing the chuunin gate guards.

It was a fine, sunny day that saw Team Seven's return from their first official C-rank, and Hinata smiled cheerfully as her beloved walked back into the village.

"The mission went about as well as you could expect," Naruto said with a shrug. "It turned into an A-rank before we were even a day's walk from the village, of course. You know how that kind of thing goes."

Hinata nodded, and fell in step alongside Naruto as the blond and his team made their way into the village. Sasuke and Sakura nodded at the girl in acknowledgement, politely greeting her with a wave or a smile.

Kakashi didn't outwardly respond to Hinata's presence. He had his nose buried in a careworn copy of _Icha Icha Paradise_, and probably wouldn't have noticed it if the entire village burst into flames all around him.

Naruto smiled at the girl, though, an easy grin quirking his lips. Hinata returned the smile in her own demure fashion, quietly confident in her poise and expression.

"I see," she said thoughtfully. "Are you okay?"

"'M'alright," Naruto answered, assuaging her concern with a wave of his hand. "Wasn't anything we couldn't handle."

"That's good," Hinata commented. "I'd hate to see you or your teammates injured on your first real mission."

Naruto gave her a sly grin, and puffed out his chest.

"Nonsense, Hinata-chan! Every mission we take is important to the village. No matter what a job might be ranked as, it is imperative that we take it seriously. To do anything less would be an insult to our pride as shinobi, and to the trust of the hokage!"

Hinata giggled, and patted him on the shoulder.

"Yes, dear. Of course, dear," she said, responding in an absentminded, _smile and nod_ sort of fashion. "Whatever you say."

Naruto repaid this comment with a blink-and-you-miss-it peck on the cheek, and a similarly quick pat on the rear.

"You know what I mean, sweetie," he spoke, winking cheerfully. "Every little bit counts, and the village depends on the revenue we bring in with our missions."

Hinata giggled, and retaliated by snatching her husband's hand and twining their fingers tightly together.

"You _tease_," she said, her eyes glinting with amusement. She winked at him. "Don't start something you can't finish."

Naruto pouted.

"Even if I still can't do it reliably..." he muttered, before shaking his head. "Well, that's beside the point. I've got good news!"

Hinata delicately arched a slim, lavender eyebrow.

"Oh? And what would that be?" she inquired carefully.

"The mission was a success!"

The way he said _mission_ made it clear to her that he meant something quite apart from any job sanctioned by the honorable Sandaime. She smiled cautiously, an unreadable expression flitting momentarily across her face.

"Ah," she murmured. "That's good."

* * *

><p><em>Inari and the other villagers stared, slackjawed, at the sight of Gato's very few remaining men turning tail to flee. The vast majority of the mercenaries were laid out cold at the far end of the bridge, looking surprisingly unharmed despite their present state of unconsciousness. <em>

_The young Wave native who had done his darnedest to rally his dispirited countrymen weakly lowered his crossbow, blinking owlishly. _

_Kakashi and Zabuza looked pretty beat up. The latter appeared quite sheepish as someone who was either a very pretty girl or an EXTREMELY pretty boy tended to an assortment of minor injuries. Sakura herself had a pair of shadow clones attending to her jounin sensei, and the third one of her was healing some pretty gnarly stab wounds on the Kiri swordsman's arms._

_Sasuke waved to Inari in languid greeting__ with his one arm__, the ground around him littered with a veritable haystack of gleaming acupuncture needles, as well as a very large puddle. The older boy didn't look like he had a single scratch on him, or even one hair out of place._

_And at the far end of the bridge, where the few conscious mercenaries left were flinging themselves over the edge to escape retribution at the hands of the ramshackle Wave militia, a seemingly unfazed Naruto was patting a distraught and sobbing Gato on the shoulder. _

_Notably, the tyrannical businessman's nose was bent at an odd angle, and he looked to have the makings of a nasty shiner around one eye. _

_"There, there," the blond was saying, speaking in a soothing tone. "We all make mistakes. But the important thing is knowing when to admit you've done wrong."_

_"I just wanted you to love me, papa...!" the ruthless shipping magnate wailed. "I never meant to hurt all those people!" _

_He buried his face in his hands, a very loud and miserable sounding sob tearing from his throat._

_Inari, and the several score of concerned Wave citizens backing him up, blinked in unison. The effect was somewhere between comical and creepy. You could actually HEAR their eyelids sorta wetly clapping shut, before sliding back apart in perfect synchronization. _

_"...the hell did we miss?" Inari gaped._

* * *

><p>Hinata met Naruto's eye, and he nodded seriously. She smiled, tilting her head in silent acknowledgement of the unspoken message. He squeezed her hand, and leaned in for another quick and silent ninja kiss.<p>

A slightest pink flush worked its way up from the nape of Hinata's neck, her cheeks subtly coloring. Her smile became playfully lopsided, and she gently shoved her husband.

"Hahaha!" Naruto laughed, bright and sunny. "It is, it is!"

Kakashi looked up from his book to eye the pair a hint curiously. He shook his head, sighing in what sounded like amused exasperation.

"Man, kids these days..." he muttered to himself. "Hard to believe they're already pairing off."

There was a touch of something nostalgic in the man's tone, a whisper of happy recollection untainted by the bitterer memories of bloodshed and tears. He glanced from Naruto and Hinata, who seemed to be competing to see who could express their affections the most stealthily as they walked down mainstreet, to Sasuke and Sakura, who sounded like they were in the middle of bickering like an old married couple.

"Honestly, sweetie... just admit you thought he was cute, already," the pinkette said to the last loyal Uchiha, a twinkle of something Kakashi would rather not psychoanalyze in her eyes.

"I did _not_," Sasuke retorted stubbornly, hand tucked peevishly into his pocket. He was slouching and scowling, a slight scowl on his face. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not _into_ that kind of thing?"

Sakura giggled and gave him a pat on the back.

"Now, now!" she singsonged. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. He wore that yukata _very well_, after all."

Sasuke's cheeks reddened, and he looked away from Sakura.

"Sure, okay. Yeah," he muttered peevishly. "It did look good on him, I'll admit that much. If he'd been a girl, I might have even thought he was cute." He gave Sakura a sharp look. "But he wasn't. So I _didn't_."

"Mm-hm. Whatever you have to tell yourself," Sakura said, smirking wryly. "Personally, I'd say he was absolutely ADORABLE."

"You and your _shoutacon_," Sasuke huffed. "Honestly, woman..."

Sakura rolled her eyes.

"Prude," she teased, blowing a raspberry. Then she winked. "Or maybe I should say _hypocrite_," she added, smirking. "'Cause I'm pretty sure I saw you checking out Tsunami-san's..."

"That's completely different," Sasuke cut in, speaking remarkably loftily. Briefly shooting a glance at Kakashi, he lowered his voice to say: _"She's much closer to our actual age, for one thing."_

Sakura snorted.

"And the fact that you and I are an item isn't enough to convince you not to stare at her ass?" she jibed, though there was no actual heat in her words.

"Oh, _please_. Like it kept you from eyeing Zabuza's package," Sasuke retorted, rolling his eyes.

Sakura shrugged.

"What can I say?" she replied. "I have a thing for younger men."

"He's not what I'd call handsome, though," Sasuke said. "Or are you _into_ that whole 'no-eyebrows' thing?"

"And what would you call handsome?" Sakura teased, latching onto the first part of his statement. "Eh, honey?"

Sasuke blushed. It wasn't immediately obvious, but it was there.

He coughed, clearing his throat.

"...Haku," he conceded, seeing that his wife had brought their topic full-circle. Quickly, face reddening further, he added: "You know, since most girls seem to like their men to be on the more effeminate side..."

"He IS a total bishie," Sakura conceded, nodding sagely. "Though I'd say I've mostly outgrown that phase. Plus his face is just a bit too girly for my tastes."

She winked at Sasuke, and grabbed his hand.

* * *

><p><em>"No way in hell is that a man," Sasuke hissed to Naruto, watching Haku leave the clearing. "Men do not shake their hips like that."<em>

_"Clearly you've never seen Sai at a dance club," Naruto drawled, watching Haku go. "Besides, which of us apprenticed under the biggest straight pervert in the Elemental Nations? I know a woman when I see one."_

_"Haku is not a man," Sasuke insisted vehemently. "She's obviously just a very flat-chested girl."_

_Naruto rolled his eyes._

_"Keep telling yourself that, bud. If you want to believe that Haku is just a pettanko who likes to go around lying about her gender..."_

_"She is," Sasuke spoke, a steely look in his eyes. "And if you so much as breathe a whisper to the contrary, I will punch you SO HARD."_

_Naruto snorted, a smirk tilting his lips. _

_"Whatever helps you sleep at night," he chirped. Then he waggled his eyebrows. "But in all seriousness, Haku __**does**__ have a very nice ass."_

_"...yeah, fair enough," Sasuke conceded, a faint flush to his cheeks._

* * *

><p>"That never happened, Naruto," Sasuke ground out, glaring at the blond.<p>

Naruto smirked mischievously.

"Maybe," he said evasively. "But you can't definitively prove a negative statement, so there's always a chance that you actually _were_ ogling Haku's butt."

Sasuke glared. His face was red as a beet. Sakura giggled, amusedly side-eyeing her husband. Hinata smiled, her eyes twinkling with interest.

Kakashi turned a page in his Icha Icha.

"I hate you _so much_ right now," Sasuke muttered darkly.

Naruto laughed, waving a hand dismissively.

"Sure, sure, whatever you say," he said.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with you appreciating certain parts of this Haku-san's anatomy," Hinata added comfortingly, patting Sasuke on the shoulder of his missing arm.

Sakura nodded eagerly.

"And if you decided to appreciate them in a more _hands on_ manner..." she added with a playful wink, "...preferably while I'm watching..."

The pinkette waggled her eyebrows suggestively.

Sasuke grimaced at this, and looked dearly like he wanted to continue defending his heterosexuality. Instead, after a moment of visible indecision he spat out a exceptionally vehement curse against Naruto, Haku, and the whole damn world in general.

Kakashi turned another page in his Icha Icha.

* * *

><p>AN: The Land of Waves arc is the first real hurdle in any retelling of _Naruto_, and the point at which many promising and not-so-promising fics alike wind up terminally stalling. I myself have hit that stumbling block at least once before, which was very good motivation for me to try and find a relatively novel approach.

My original plan was to cover the whole Wave arc in the manner above, but then... _certain factors_... intervened and convinced me to post this chapter even though it's only half the length of what I've gotten used to posting for this story.

...not to say that 2k words isn't a perfectly respectable chapter length, but...

... ... ...well, my primary motivation had to do with really wanting to get the below post script out of my system.

It is not looking like a terribly pleasant Christmas season for me.

**Updated:** 12-17-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤

p.s.: Ugh, I've got a wisdom tooth coming in at a 45 degree angle fucking _sideways_ and it's a **sharp** sumbitch diggin' right into my cheek, but it didn't really show its head until around the 14th-15th. No way in hell am I gonna be able to get this bastard pulled in anything resembling a timely manner.

This would be bad enough by itself, but I did some math the other day and realized that it has to have been like 5 or 6 damn years since I've been to a dentist. I've prolly got LOADS of cavities I don't even notice 'cause I've grown used to that particular discomfort, and I know for a _fact_ that one of my teeth – the furthest molar back on the upper right hand side – is basically hollow. I haven't felt hardly so much as a twinge from that-a-ways in AGES, but any dentist visit I do will likely be very awkward and quite possibly very expensive even with mum's insurance number.

But back on the matter of the wisdom tooth, it's a fucking nightmare. Ugh. The headaches I've been getting from the damned thing are hell, and it feels really goddamn uncomfortable to move my mouth outside of a very minimal range.

Also, brushing with some of that sensitivity reducing toothpaste actually made the pain of the fucking tooth even worse. So, yeah. _That's_ a thing now, too.

Plus I've got jury duty to look forward to in mid-January.

_Yay. _

/sarcasm

(i am going to be going thru SO MUCH goddamn aspirin over the next few weeks)


	7. Stalkers and Spies

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Tsunade was not having the best day.<p>

Or week.

...or month.

In fact, pretty much the whole past several years had just been one big mess. Aside from the gambling losses, and massive debts, and sleepless nights filled with dreams of blood and failure, she also had to deal with people coming to her and asking for her services.

And not _those_ kinds of services, mind you – she was called the Legendary Sucker SOLELY for the fact that she never knew when to quit, when it came to gambling. But she was also a legendary medic, almost universally considered to be the best healer in the world.

So there were lots of people who wanted her to take a look at their sickly or injured loved ones. And for the most part, these were the otherwise hopeless cases who had nothing left to lose – the sort of people who thought, _"Well, if Tsunade can't do it, __**no one**__ can."_

This wouldn't be so bad, of course, if the only folk requesting her aid were wealthy, affluent types who could pay handsomely for her trouble. Sure, there was that crippling hemophobia she had to work around, but that's what she had Shizune for.

But unfortunately, a disproportionate number of the people who sought Tsunade out were desperate charity cases. And it never failed to make her feel like a total _heel_ when she turned those sorts away, but she also knew that she couldn't just go around treating people for free. She needed every red cent just to scrape by from one day to the next.

She wouldn't dirty her hands for free.

She couldn't afford to.

... ... ... and yet, she would do a hundred pro bono jobs in a heartbeat, if only it meant never having to go back to the Leaf again. Even after all these years, her sensei refused to give up on trying to convince her to return.

Tsunade let out an exasperated sigh, leaning against a good sized boulder as she stared up at the clouds. Fluffy, meandering drifts of water vapor, white cotton wisps floating across a blue backdrop. Her eyes, brown and weary, flicked side to side as she stared listlessly at the sky.

_That one looks like a toad._

She gazed at a particularly lumpy cumulus, trailing banks like outstretched legs behind it. The resemblance was faint, and academically Tsunade understood that it was just a quirk of the brain's image visual recognition processes, that the cloud didn't really bear objectivesimilarity to _any sort_ of amphibian.

Yet, all the same, her thoughts turned unbidden to Jiraiya, whom she had both consciously and unconsciously associated with toads for nearly as long as she'd known the man. Tsunade felt a weight in her chest, and her eyelids seemed painfully heavy. She stared silently at the sky, feeling unusually introspective.

Normally she would be gambling at this time of day, or traveling from one town to another, or even doing some kind of favor for one of her debtors to make them let up a bit of the pressure. But the nearest town was still a few days away, and no one was hounding her for money at the moment. And besides that, Shizune wasn't looking all that good today.

It was that time of the month for the younger woman, and even with her level of medical ninjutsu there was only so much that could be done without access to certain herbs or pharmaceuticals. And Tsunade had lost even more money at the last town than usual, so much so that they'd been forced to choose between food or medicine.

Shizune was a real trooper, of course, and would have gladly soldiered on through the discomfort, but Tsunade felt sympathetic to the girl (and even if Shizune was a mature woman and jounin-level kunoichi much, much closer in age to thirty than thirteen, she would probably always think of her as a _girl_) and had suggested they take a break.

Although she didn't show it outright, Tsunade could tell that Shizune was grateful. They were resting a short ways off the road, now, maybe three or so yards. Tsunade was reclining against a small boulder, and the girl who could have been her niece was down by the stream, splashing her face with cool water.

Judging by the position of the sun overhead, and the length of time for which they'd been walking, it was probably late noon. Maybe around one or two o'clock.

Tsunade glanced towards her apprentice and traveling companion, who was gently coaxing Tonton to take a drink while they were stopped. It wasn't a particularly large stream, just four feet across and maybe two, two-and-a-half foot deep, but nonetheless the diminutive pig looked distinctly mistrustful of the burbling water.

As Shizune continued patting and urging her pet/summon to take a sip, Tsunade looked down in her lap, shifting against the rock and feeling the scroll in her coat pocket. It pressed into her side, and she felt a twinge of ill humor at the reminder of its presence.

She scowled.

_You are hereby cordially invited to an Uzumaki family reunion in the Hidden Leaf Village. As a surviving descendant of the Uzumaki clan, your presence at this event would be greatly appreciated..._

The letter's contents replayed themselves through her mind, like the words of a particularly pushy salesman who lacked the good sense to take _**no**_ for an answer.

"Uzumaki...? That's rich," Tsunade muttered darkly, wondering ruefully if she didn't still have a half-full bottle of sake somewhere amongst her possessions. "_Please._ Like I'd ever actually fall for such a transparent ploy." She shook her head, staring blearily at the grass between her legs. "You'll need to do a hell of a lot better than that if you want to lure me back to the village, Sarutobi-sensei..."

Down by the stream, Shizune let out a startled yelp as a testy, mulish Tonton splashed her clothes with a considerable volume of rather chilly water.

"Ack! No, bad! _Bad_ Tonton!" the woman squeaked. "_BAD!_"

Tsunade pinched the bridge of her nose.

"Ugh... I need a blasted drink," she sighed.

* * *

><p>Kiba ducked out of sight when he saw Team Seven approaching with Hinata in tow. He gently wrapped a hand around Akamaru's muzzle, silently hushing the pup. Concealed behind a pile of crates, the Inuzuka cautiously peeked out from a gap between the boxes.<p>

His eyes were narrowed, and his lips described a perplexed frown. He stared suspiciously at Naruto, who was holding Hinata's hand, chatting and smiling with the girl like he didn't have a care in the world.

Kiba fought the urge to growl.

Shino had said he was being ridiculous to get so worked up over Hinata hanging out with the members of another team. Kiba, in frustrated retaliation, had snapped _"Your FACE is ridiculous!"_

It only took Kurenai-sensei a few seconds to pull her two male genin off of each other, but the lecture she'd then given them about maturity and cooperation and all that crap ate up nearly half an hour of their training time.

This left both boys very irked indeed.

And in Kiba's opinion, Naruto and his teammates were _obviously_ the ones to blame for that. After all, if it weren't for how odd Naruto and Sasuke had been acting recently, he wouldn't have felt the need to get so worked up over how much time Hinata was spending with them in between training and missions. And if he wasn't so obssessive about figuring out what the hell was _up_ with Team Seven, he wouldn't have been getting on Shino's nerves with his fidgeting and muttered suspicions.

So, yeah. As far as he was concerned, that whole lecture was all Naruto's fault. Sasuke's, too.

(He gave Sakura a pass because she was a _girl_, and he didn't know her all that well from the academy anyways, so he wasn't actually sure how much of her behavior recently could actually be considered _unusual_)

Kiba glared at Naruto from behind what he thought was perfect cover. And in all fairness, it WAS pretty good stealth for a ninja as inexperienced as himself. Sneaky enough to fool most other rookie genin without any problem.

Of course, none of those five were rookie _anything_.

Kakashi could smell the boy, and hear him crouching behind the boxes. Sasuke and Sakura detected him instinctively, getting the gut feeling that someone was watching them, and quickly deducing who it was and where they were hidden.

Hinata, although her doujutsu was not properly active, still had very sharp sight. She'd spotted Kiba before he even saw them coming. And Naruto, as a sensory type ninja whose skills were beyond even being called _kage level_, was aware of every single person in the village. Kiba might as well have been standing three inches from the blond's face, for all the good his hiding spot did him.

So all five members of this group were in fact _perfectly conscious_ of Kiba spying on them. Kakashi noticed that his students (and Hinata) noticed, and each of the four reluctant time travelers were intuitively aware of the others' awareness.

Naruto, not sensing any malice greater than a mild curiousity with the tiniest dash of petty envy, gave Sasuke a _look_ that told the Uchiha to stand down right as he was considering whether to call out their apparent stalker. Sasuke scowled infinitesimally at this, but then gave a dismissive half shrug.

Sakura smiled, meeting Sasuke's eyes, and nodded in unspoken understanding. Hinata clasped Naruto's hand, squeezing it gently.

Kakashi pondered what to do for dinner.

Kiba, being only an inexperienced rookie genin (albeit a reasonably talented one) did not realize that he'd been spotted. Thus, he continued to tail Team Seven (plus Hinata) for several more minutes.

They went on up the street, and Kiba slipped stealthily out from behind the crates, skulking along after them. He scurried from one cover to the next, zigzagging across the road, zipping behind streetlamps and stalls.

Kakashi parted ways with his team after two more blocks, waving distractedly to Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, and telling them to take the rest of the week off. From what Kiba could gather, apparently their last mission had been a higher rank than expected, and there was a lot of paperwork Kakashi would need to go through before his genin could take another job.

"I don't see what the big deal is..." Sasuke's voice drifted down to Kiba, the Inuzuka listening raptly to Team Seven's conversation. "...It was just an A-rank, after all... and not even a particularly difficult one."

Kiba shared a perplexed look with Akamaru at this statement.

An _A-rank?_

... ... ...nah, that couldn't be. Sasuke was probably just taking the mickey.

Sure, the Uchiha hadn't exactly been known for his sense of humor back in the academy, but Kiba had noticed through his reconnaissance ("Shut up, Shino, it's _not_ _stalking!_") that Sasuke had, after graduation, apparently cultivated a certain dry, sarcastic wit. So this was probably some kind of weird, team in-joke.

Kiba's thoughts were then interrupted by a snatch of speech from Sakura.

"...yeah, sensei... not a single scratch between the three of us . . . maybe next time . . . . . actual _challenge_..."

Akamaru fidgeted next to Kiba. Team Seven was moving outside their range of hearing.

Kiba nodded, and darted up across the street. He ducked behind a barrel not three feet behind Kakashi, and was once more close enough to hear what his marks were saying.

"...the paperwork will take a while, regardless."

"You sure you don't want our help with the mission report, Kaka-sensei? More hands make for lighter burdens, after all."

"But too many cooks spoil the broth, Naruto. Kakashi-sensei has already offered to do that for us."

"Right. And besides, I doubt Kakashi would trust us anywhere near a mission report form after that Tora fiasco..."

Naruto sighed, and shook his head. He, Sakura, Sasuke, and Hinata came to a stop while Kakashi continued onward. Team Seven's jounin sensei did not tarry, and was soon well out of sight.

"It was an honest accident," the blond said, looking mildly peevish. "Really, just because the Old Man wound up having to redact like three quarters of the report when he finally sent that copy over to ANBU archives..."

Sakura rolled her eyes.

"It was a D-rank mission, Naruto. How you managed to get the details of the report classified as an _S-rank secret_ is beyond me."

Hinata let out a giggle.

"Ah, yes, I remember hearing about that... it's what caused that recent diplomatic incident with Cloud, right?"

Kiba blinked, not sure how to take this remark.

Sasuke, in contrast, snorted and rolled his eyes.

"You should've known better than to try and borrow chakra from the ni—"

"—Yugito Ni'i-san, correct?" Hinata interjected, shooting Sasuke an oddly stern look. "Yes, she was with the delegation that came to the village. I overheard as much from father."

A strange expression flickered across Sasuke's face. He gave a start, before reddening and nodding.

"Yeah, right. That's what I meant."

(Somehow or other, Kiba got the opposite impression... but honestly, he couldn't make heads or tails of what they were saying. The individual words made sense, but something about the way they were being strung together simply refused to parse.)

Sasuke gave Naruto an odd look, after saying this, and the blond scratched the back of his neck sheepishly.

"Heheh... to be fair, I'd thought Tora might react better to a more feline chakra."

"But clearly you were mistaken," Sakura commented. She smirked.

Naruto blushed.

"...right. Yeah, fair enough." He gave a shrug. "And, honestly, it had completely slipped my mind that Yugito would still..."

"It was a pain in the ass trying to explain that whole mess to the Lord Third," Sasuke sighed, shaking his head. "I don't think he even bought our explanation."

Hinata smiled.

"What was it, again...?" she mused, a twinkle in her eye. "I do recall that Naruto told me, but the exact details seem to have slipped my mind..."

Sakura gave Hinata a curious look. There was something Kiba couldn't read in the pinkette's eyes, and for the briefest moment he thought he saw her glancing toward his hiding spot. But the next moment she was looking back at Hinata, and didn't seem to give any noticeable sign that she had seen him.

(Kiba let out a relieved sigh.)

He didn't catch what Sakura said next, though. She lowered her voice and leaned in toward Hinata, cupping a hand over her mouth to stymie any would-be lip readers. Whatever Sakura said, though, it must have been very amusing, because Hinata suddenly let out a clear and mirthful laugh.

" Oh my! You don't _say!_" she tittered, pearlescent eyes merrily twinkling. "Oh, _my_."

She shook her head, smiling playfully at Naruto.

The blond blushed when Hinata's gaze fell on him, and he scratched the back of his neck.

"What can I say?" he mumbled, sounding a touch sheepish. "I was grasping at straws with that one... m'just thankful Yugito-chan didn't bother to contradict me."

Sasuke smirked.

"I daresay she wouldn't have been able, whether she wanted to or not..." he drawled. His eyes gleamed. "What with how _hard_ she was laughing..."

Naruto responded with a mildly rude gesture.

"Oh, shove off," he sniped. "Or should I tell Sakura about those magazines you had me hide for you the other day...?"

Sasuke went red in the face.

"I _told you_," he grumbled. "They weren't mine. I found them in a box of Itachi's old things."

Naruto smirked.

"Oho_ho?_" he drawled, grinning like the cat that caught the canary. "So you and Obito weren't the only Uchiha to have a nurse fetish..."

Sasuke's eye twitched, and he leaned in to hiss something Kiba couldn't quite catch. All he was able to make out were _"just because"_ something _"medic-ninja"_ and something, something, _"doesn't even count, anyways."_

Hinata smiled knowingly at this, and glanced sidelong at Naruto, who mirrored her expression.

"Are you sure, Sasuke?" said the Hyuuga heiress. "Because I seem to recall hearing about a certain anniversary dinner..."

Sasuke's face went redder than any tomato, and he immediately wheeled on Sakura with an expression on his face that Kiba might have described as something almost like betrayal.

"_You told HINATA?!_" he yelped.

Sakura shook her head, smiling softly.

"Don't look at me, dear," she told him. "I wasn't the one who blabbed."

Sasuke frowned. He seemed to calm down marginally at this, though he still looked a touch mortified.

"...was it Shizune?" he muttered.

"Hana," Sakura said. "After it was over, I guess she was really drunk, and went off and blabbed to..."

Once again, it seemed for a split second like Sakura was looking straight at Kiba. But then her eyes were back on Sasuke, and she was talking like she hadn't seen anything.

Kiba wondered slightly at this comment about his sister getting drunk. Hana wasn't actually of age yet, and she usually seemed to be very stringent about following the rules. He spent a few seconds mentally debating whether to file this remark away as potential blackmail material on his big sis.

He also wondered what his older sister would know about Sasuke and Sakura, but shrugged it off a moment later as something he didn't particularly _care_ about.

"...well, I'm sure you can guess who," Sakura finished.

Sasuke scowled, implying that, yes, he _could_ guess who.

"Remind to kick that bastard's ass the next time we see him," he muttered. Onyx eyes flashed.

Sakura smiled indulgently, and nodded her head.

"Sure, sure. Whatever you say, dear."

She patted him on the shoulder.

* * *

><p>Kabuto Yakushi frowned as he looked over the most recent intelligence he'd gathered within the village. Coded documents written in a cipher that only three people alive could read appeared on his desk in a puff of smoke, called up from within a small black storage scroll.<p>

His bedroom was nothing special. It was not especially tidy, but not quite messy, either. It was a small, "cozy" affair in a cheap, modest flat. Perfectly ordinary and unremarkable: nothing that would lead someone to suspect its tenant as being anything unusual.

Kabuto's desk lamp shined a sickly yellow light over his coded documents. Papers rustled as he shuffled them, flipping through the intelligence reports.

Kabuto was a firm believer in checking his work.

Dark eyes swiveled left and right, skimming the contents of the documents he had compiled over the last few weeks. Kabuto was a very good spy, and rarely ever let something escape his attention. There was no such thing as a superfluous detail in his opinion. Even if it didn't seem immediately important, you could never know when an apparently small matter might wind up proving paramount.

It had already been decided that he would meet up with one of Lord Orochimaru's agents during his next mission outside the village. Tentative plans had been drawn up for infiltrating Konoha during the next chuunin exams, and while there was nothing concrete yet, it was nonetheless crucial that Kabuto gather as much information as possible.

_Scientia potentia est. _That was Orochimaru's motto, and Kabuto believed in it strongly. The intelligence he would be passing along to the Hidden Sound was worth his weight in gold, and it would be inexcusably remiss of him to hand along anything faulty or suspect.

Knowledge was power, and power corrupted. And Kabuto was one of the best damn spies alive. He knew better than to trust _anyone_ completely. Even Orochimaru.

_Especially_ Orochimaru.

Glancing again at a paper which described a private meeting between the Sandaime Hokage and Kakashi Hatake – the transcript of a conversation regarding one young Sasuke's apparent activation of the rare and potent _mangekyo sharingan_ – Kabuto hummed thoughtfully. The glare from his lamp's light rendered the young man's spectacles nearly opaque from the right angle.

The corner of his lip twitched up in something distantly like a smirk. Separating this paper from the others, Kabuto crumpled it up and tossed it into his waste basket. Fractions of a second later, he deftly and disinterestedly smothered the resultant fire with a flame retardant blanket.

He then glanced at a closely related form, one which contained an encoded copy of a certain medical report regarding young Sasuke and his missing arm.

It took only a moment for the spy to decide his next course of action.

Grabbing his pen, Kabuto added a few notes to subtly emphasize the possible ramifications of Sasuke's dismemberment, particularly in regards to his combat ability, and certain top secret plans that Orochimaru had been devising for the lad.

Then he flicked through a few more papers, coming eventually to a report on the so-called "Hinata Massacre" (the Hyuuga clan had hushed the incident up pretty quickly, but not before Kabuto had learned everything he needed to know).

With a flourish of his pen, Kabuto added a few notes on the byakugan's potential usefulness, inconspicuously commenting on the apparent level of skill which young Hinata had demonstrated. He then smiled to himself, capping his pen after a few minutes of writing, and nodded in satisfaction with his work.

Setting that aside, Kabuto proceeded to check the rest of his reports.

It would not do to send Orochimaru-sama any _faulty_ or _misleading_ intelligence, after all.

* * *

><p>"Can you <em>believe<em> that girl?" Ino hissed, seething in her usual seat at Yakiniku-Q.

Chouji sat next next to the platinum blonde, inhaling deeply as their meat cooked on the grill. He smiled at his female teammate, and gave her a goodnatured chuckle.

"That depends," he said. "Who are you talking about?"

Shikamaru sighed, seated opposite his best friend.

"C'mon, Chouji, I'm sure there's only _one_ girl she'd be talking about like that," he grumbled, glancing wistfully out the window. "It's Sakura, right?"

Ino glared.

"She's been getting far too cozy with Sasuke-kun," the Yamanaka heiress muttered, her eyes flashing. She ground her teeth. "That human billboard... if she thinks that being on the same team is an excuse for them to act all lovey-dovey...!"

Chouji arched one of his eyebrows at this statement.

"_Love-dovey?_" he said, side-eyeing Ino. "Are we talking about the same Sakura, here? I've seen 'em around the village a couple times, you know. She and Sasuke aren't exactly what I'd call mushy or ooey-gooey."

"Half the time I see them, those two are practically at each other's throats," Shikamaru concurred. "Hardly a starstruck romance, if you ask me."

Ino rolled her eyes.

"_Boys_," she muttered in apparent exasperation. "Can't you two even read between the lines? Sakura and Sasuke-kun are flirting _all the time!_ It's **sickening**!"

"_Flirting?_" Shikamaru parroted, sounding disbelieving. He made a face. "Geez. If _that's_ what you think courtship is supposed to look like, then maybe I should just forego romance altogether."

"Yeah," Chouji said, nodding. "I'm with Shikamaru on this one. If that's what you call flirting..."

Ino scoffed.

"I'm surrounded by idiots," she muttered. "You two don't know the first thing about romance, do you?" She shook her head. "Why, _next_ I suppose you'll be saying you can't even tell Naruto and Hinata are an item."

Shikamaru blinked.

"Wait, _what?_" he said.

Chouji stared at Ino, looking similarly astonished.

"Those two? An _item?_"

Ino stared at the two, unwilling to believe that they could possibly be THIS oblivious. After a moment's thought, and the slowly dawning realization that, yes, her teammates really_ were_ that thick, she let out a miserable groan.

"I can't believe I'm supposed to _work _with you idiots..." she bemoaned.

"Yeah, yeah... right back at you, Ino," Shikamaru muttered.

Chouji's attention shifted back to the meat on the grill.

"Well, enough talk," he said. "Smells like lunch is ready."

Ino scowled, but reluctantly grabbed her chopsticks. Shikamaru mentally debated the merits of competing with his teammates for the food versus just getting something out of the fridge once he got home.

For his part, Asuma was greatly enjoying his impromptu restroom rendezvous with Kurenai.

* * *

><p>AN: Well, as far as my tooth, the good news is that I've gotten mostly acclimated to the pain/discomfort by now (except for when trying to fall asleep). Which is _good_, because the earliest dental appointment I was able to arrange was for January 8.

Now, for the chapter, this was mainly just sort of an interstitial kind of... setting up stuff and possibilities for the future, establishing certain things for further on down the line, and so on. I did take this chance to have a little fun with the other Rookie Nine (no Team Guy, yet, though) and crack a few more small jokes.

Who knows what'll come next? :D

**Updated:** 12-21-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	8. Wherein Hinata is Absolutely Terrifying

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Neji was a genius. He would not be the first to tell you this, but Lee and Tenten both spoke highly enough of his skills, without any need for prompting. The former would in a mix of envy and admiration, and the latter would out of simple respect.<p>

Neji was the rookie of the year in his graduating class. His grades had all been very good, with high marks across the board. Practically every last one of his academy instructors agreed that he held the most promise out of all his classmates, and several of his former teachers had a running pool on when he would be promoted to jounin.

(There was very good money on him making the cut before his eighteenth birthday)

Neji was a veritable taijutsu prodigy, scarcely fourteen yet already nearing definite mastery of the subtle and formidable gentle fist style. He could already go toe to toe with most chuunin in hand to hand combat, and his practical and theoretical grasp of the Hyuuga clan's secret arts was virtually second to none.

Neji had all the makings of an excellent shinobi. Certainly there were those who doubted the boy's emotional hang ups, and questioned whether he would truly grow into a stable and well-adjusted soldier of the Leaf, but most trusted that he could come to terms with his issues, given sufficient time.

And, all of that aside, he did have the skill. Neji was an excellent fighter, with a cool temperament and (seemingly) level head. Even people who weren't fond of the boy could appreciate his combat prowess, and his grasp of the ninjutsu fundaments. Neji's peers admired him greatly – even those who dearly longed to knock him down a peg could at least respect his _ability_.

But all of that respect would probably fly out the window if they could see him right now.

Neji Hyuuga, rookie of the year, gentle fist prodigy, wielder of the strongest and purest byakugan of his generation, was cowering behind a rack of brooms and mops, right next to a shelf of miscellaneous cleaning supplies. There was dust in his hair, and his clothes were disheveled.

He was hiding.

_"Oh, Neji-niisan~? Wherever might you be~?"_

That honeyed, chirping voice sent shivers down Neji's spine. The bad kind of shivers.

The _fear _kind.

(His cousin was _terrifying_)

A tuneless humming reached his ears, wafting easily through the paper-thin sliding door. Neji's pulse skyrocketed at the sound, and he started shivering despite himself. His face was chalk white.

_"You are my friend, hm-mm-hm-hm... You are my dream... hmm-hm, do you remember when...? Hm-mm-hm-mm, hmm-hm-mm-hm-hm... da na na, da da, the distance..."_

Neji bit back a whimper, and he prayed to every god, kami, and saint he'd ever heard of that Hinata Hyuuga would not deign to activate her byakugan. If she did, it was as good as **over**.

He really didn't know what the girl would do if she found him, but considering what had happened the day after her academy graduation... well, Neji had to admit that he'd never been particularly pleasant to the girl. Not that he'd ever been outright **hostile**, considering that Hiashi-sama had activated his father's curse mark over the man just _glaring_ at his daughter...

...but Hinata was obviously unstable. A historical lack of blatant bellicosity on Neji's part would hardly save him from sharing the fate of his more unfortunate family members if the girl up and snapped again. And he had certainly turned his nose up at her enough times in the past to worry about her possibly holding a grudge.

Ever since that event, which had quickly become known as the Hinata Massacre (because for all their stoicism and pomposity, most of the elder Hyuuga had a guilty fondness for puns), Neji had taken to avoiding Hinata as much as possible.

And it actually wasn't too difficult, at first. Hiashi-sama had quite sensibly relieved the prickly and obstinate Neji of any duties which might bring him into close contact with the girl shortly after her rampage, for fear that he might set her off with his _Neji-ness_. But it seemed that Hinata had noticed his absence, and she was becoming increasingly fixated on him.

She actively sought him out, now, and Neji had grown fearful that Hinata would ultimately find him just in time to have another violent episode.

He'd not been so worried about it at first, but as time passed he became more aware of Hinata's vastly improved skills. A few of the stronger and more arrogant clansmen had stubbornly refused to accept that this shy little wallflower had hospitalized nearly a tenth of their number, and thus had, one-by-one, challenged her to spars over the past few weeks. Not one of them lasted more than ten seconds.

Neji had covertly espied one of these spars, and had been frightened to see the girl effortlessly dismantling a pair of men who were collectively almost three decades her senior. These were no cocky weaklings, either – they had been tried and proven experts of the gentle fist, tempered and hardened shinobi whose skills even Neji secretly... well, _admired_ was a bit of a strong word, but they were very good fighters, and he KNEW it.

And Hinata took them down without breaking a sweat.

Her smile didn't even falter.

That had put things into perspective for him. Namely, that Hinata Hyuuga was _fucking terrifying_.

So Neji did his damnedest to avoid her whenever possible, even at the cost of his own dignity. It had certainly been galling to hear Tenten giggle and guffaw over seeing him duck into the bushes the other day when Hinata had come calling at his team's training ground, but when push came to shove Neji happened to prioritize his personal well being over other people's perceptions of him.

(Although the glimmer of mirth in Lee's eyes had **almost** been enough to make him seriously consider suicide by cousin)

Neji felt a chill go down his spine as Hinata's footsteps – light and nearly inaudible – came closer to his hiding place. His breath caught in his throat, and his heart nearly leapt out of his chest.

_"Neji-niisan?"_ came Hinata's voice, frighteningly near and clear. She was right outside the broom closet. _"Why won't you come out and talk to me? It has been a very long time since we've last spoken."_

Neji was stiff as a board, and white as a sheet. Silently whispered prayers for mercy died on his lips, hearing a hand come to rest on the paper-thin shoji door.

A sliver of light found its way into the dark closet. Neji shrank behind the mops and brooms, hearing the door slide open. The slender beam of luminescence spread, widening as the shade was parted.

Light fell across his face, and he beheld two shimmering opal orbs.

The last of Neji's hopes died and shriveled up somewhere between his liver and kidneys.

"Ah, there you are," Hinata chirped, beaming at her older cousin. "I have been looking everywhere for you, Neji-niisan~"

The stoic Hyuuga prodigy whimpered.

* * *

><p>The international journeyman advancement examinations (known more commonly today as the Chuunin Exams) were first held in Konoha a little over sixty years ago, the product of a tentative collaboration between Tobirama Senju and the other five kage. Genin from the greater hidden villages were sent to the Leaf to participate in a test of the Nidaime's own devising, a three-stage series of challenges designed to prove the worth of candidates for promotion to chuunin.<p>

It was virtually unheard of at the time. Before the founding of the hidden villages, there hadn't really been any sort of concrete ranking system for shinobi. Back when it was just the various ninja clans fighting amongst themselves, missions were simply entrusted to whoever was available at the time, and it wasn't until Madara and Hashirama came along that anyone bothered to actually try and work out a better system.

Ranking missions according to difficulty/price and assigning them to shinobi of appropriate skill was a relatively recent idea, a response by the Senju and Uchiha patriarchs to the senseless loss of life they had witnessed in their youth during the Warring States Era. Hashirama and Madara were visionaries, even if the latter _did_ wind up going batshit and trying to destroy the village he helped create.

From the beginning, those two had focused on the big picture, leaving the details up to Tobirama. He was the one who figured that it would be expedient to rank shinobi in a similar manner to how they ranked missions. The _"ge-chuu-jou"_ naming scheme was Madara's contribution, while the D through S system of mission ranking was conceived by Hashirama.

Tobirama, like always, wound up being the one to figure out the specifics of what would qualify a mission for a particular rank, and accordingly devise how those missions would be assigned among the village shinobi.

That was just what he did.

From the time they were kids, Hashirama was the one who would go off spouting all these crazy ideas, while Tobirama was the one who would cover for him. He was the guy who took all the wild, ambitious dreams of the First Hokage and worked out how to actually make those things _happen_. Like the chuunin exams.

Hashirama had wanted a fair and logical way for ninja to rise through the ranks, and he'd kicked around plenty of crazy and impractical ideas during his tenure as hokage, but it wasn't until Tobirama took up the hat that anything was actually done. It was the Nidaime who determined how to test the readiness of genin for promotion to chuunin, the specific qualities they would look for – intelligence, adaptability, and martial prowess, all set in the context of one's fitness to lead squads out into the field.

Tobirama was the one who negotiated with the other nations to send their own genin over to take the exams he ultimately devised, convincing them to use it as a proxy for war if they had to. He was the one who began the tradition of the chuunin exams, who laid down the various regulations and bylaws governing it.

Many students might have overlooked the Second Hokage for not being as monstrously powerful and charismatic as the First, or as subtly skillful and diplomatic as the Third, but Tobirama did more to shape the infrastructure and laws of the hidden villages than any other kage. _Period._ Hashirama and Madara were the ones who got the bright idea to found a village, but Tobirama was the one who figured out how to keep that village running.

Hiruzen Sarutobi, having served as hokage for over fifty years altogether, had a deep and abiding respect for his late mentor. Tobirama Senju had been an administrative genius, and even if the some of the man's internal policies had come back to bite Konoha in the ass (the Uchiha clan's attempted coup in bitterness at a perceived marginalization within the village was a glaring example), there could be no ignoring everything he had done for the organization and infrastructure of the Hidden Leaf.

Hiruzen, who had come to be known as the Professor in his autumn years, chewed absentmindedly on his pipe as he skimmed over some very important paperwork. Preparations for the chuunin exams were under way in the village. The proctors for the three stages of the exams had all been chosen, and the details of the tests were being hammered out between them.

Materials and manpower were requested for upkeep and repair of the tower in the Forest of Death, as training ground number forty-four had come to be known among the younger generations. Forms for the assignment of missions to increase highway patrols in the coming months required the hokage's signature. Messenger hawks were being put through their paces, and ANBU was knuckling down to ensure that not so much as a pocket would be picked when the foreign delegates came up for the final phase.

All of this left Hiruzen feeling quite nostalgic. He remembered the hustle and bustle of the village when Tobirama-sensei – _Nidaime-sama_ – initiated preparations for the very first Chuunin Exams. Nobody had been quite sure what to expect, back then, Hiruzen and his teammates included.

But when it came time for everything to start... well, the exams went off without a hitch. Hiruzen rightly earned his advancement to chuunin – he and Danzo the very first Leaf ninja to ever be promoted through the Exams, matching wits and fists in the final round of the third phase – and the other kage were suitably impressed, well and truly assured of the feasibility and usefulness of the exams.

The Sandaime smiled, puffing on his pipe as he thought back on all the chuunin exams he had witnessed over the years. He'd seen ninja make showings that put his genin self to shame, the likes of Kakashi and Itachi and the Legendary Sannin, and blustering idiots who made complete asses of themselves, and determined underdogs who managed to overturn the odds through sheer grit and force of will.

Idly, thinking of what Kakashi had told him about Team Seven, the Lord Third wondered which category Naruto and his friends would fall into.

He smiled, then, and scrawled his signature across the dotted line of another requisition form.

This would be a very interesting exam.

* * *

><p>Kakashi watched, only mildly bemused, as his genin ran through the teamwork exercises he'd assigned them. Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto moved in perfect synchronization, more like a single organism than three young soldiers.<p>

By this point, Kakashi was in no position to claim that this surprised him. Whatever their relations to one another had been in the academy, these three had quite clearly cast aside their differences. They worked together flawlessly, pulling off even the trickiest of maneuvers without so much as a hitch.

It was like watching the gears of a grandfather clock in motion. Not a finger moved without purpose, and every step they took carried the whole squad forward. Team Seven in action was a thing of beauty.

It was more than a tad surreal, to be honest. Most seasoned jounin couldn't do even half the things these kids did. The little buggers were _impossibly_ skilled.

Were Kakashi a more paranoid sort, he might think they'd been replaced by weirdly incompetent infiltrators – ridiculously powerful spies who couldn't even get their character down right. But Sasuke had the sharingan (_mangekyo_, the Lord Third had called it), and Naruto definitely still had the kyuubi in his belly (Kakashi'd had a Hyuuga sealmaster confirm this for him, just in case). And for all her sudden and inexplicable leaps in strength and skill, Sakura seemed no more likely to be a spy than Naruto or Sasuke.

No infiltrator good enough to replace a jinchuuriki or a bloodline clan heir would be so _stupid_ as to exhibit skills so blatantly beyond the grasp of the people they were supposed to be impersonating. Nay, as unbelievable as it seemed, somehow Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura had honestly, genuinely grown more in the course of a few nights than most shinobi grew over their entire lifetimes.

It was like Hokage-sama had told him.

_"Naruto, of course, has access to the Nine-Tailed Fox's chakra, as I'm sure you are well aware," the Sandaime intoned, seated across from Kakashi in the former's study. "He is the Lord Fourth Hokage's son, heir and successor of Kushina Uzumaki. Even if, up until this point, he has seemingly squandered his talents on chicanery and jests, I still do not doubt that he has the makings of an excellent shinobi."_

_Kakashi nodded, accepting this well enough. "Aside from his arsenal of perverted prank jutsu, Naruto has demonstrated a firm grasp of several highly diverse ninja arts in the weeks since I began training Team Seven. Much better than someone who was bottom of his class should have."_

_"Minato was a physical learner as well," the Sandaime remarked. "Although he also scored well in theory, it was undeniably in practical exercises where he truly excelled."_

_Kakashi hummed, glancing thoughtfully at a spot on the wall._

_"That makes sense, I suppose," he mused. "Sasuke has obviously been giving him and Sakura pointers. _Especially_ Sakura..."_

_"I hear those two have grown quite close," Hiruzen commented shrewdly. Something like a smile tugged at the corners of his lips._

_Kakashi nodded._

_"Yeah," he murmured. "I haven't got the whole story, of course, but she and Naruto were probably there when Sasuke lost his arm..."_

_The Sandaime nodded, as though this were entirely sensible to him._

_"Has he confided in you with any details of the accident?" the old shinobi inquired._

_Kakashi shook his head. "No, but it's obvious that those two know more than Sasuke's telling. All things considered, I think the three of them must have been training together for the bell test. There was probably an accident with a new technique he was trying to learn, or else he and Naruto got a little too feisty while sparring..." _

_Hiruzen nodded, hands folded under his chin. Dark eyes glinted thoughtfully. _

_"It is not outside the realm of belief," he said, his words carefully measured. "If anything, that would explain the sudden evolution of young Sasuke's eyes..."_

_Kakashi frowned. He felt a dry itch in Obito's eye at the mention of Sasuke's mangekyo sharingan._

_"He probably awakened it in the aftermath of the massacre, considering what you've told me about how the Uchiha's doujutsu works," he said slowly, thoughtfully._

_The Sandaime nodded._

_"Right," he said. "I do not doubt that such a magnitude of survivor's guilt would be sufficient to activate the mangekyo. Nor is it unbelievable that the emotional turmoil resulting from that tragedy might have subsequently locked away those very eyes..."_

_His words hung in the air, curiously heavy. Kakashi felt a little vaguely foolish over all this baseless conjecture, but Sasuke did not give him much to work with as far as the truth._

_"And the shock of losing a limb probably broke through his mental block, right?" he guessed, meeting the hokage's eye._

_"That is the most probable explanation," Hiruzen said with a nod. "And more than likely it also unlocked some deeply repressed memories from that night..."_

_The elderly shinobi frowned almost imperceptibly. He furrowed his brow, and hummed quietly in his throat. His lips tightened into a thin line, and he met Kakashi's eye._

_"You are certain he has not demonstrated any signs of emotional instability?"_

_Kakashi shrugged, feeling rather at a loss._

_"Honestly? First impressions aside, he actually seems to be remarkably well-adjusted." His one eye narrowed. "And I don't mean just superficially, either. His relationship with Naruto and Sakura appears stable and healthy, and he hasn't exhibited any particular fixation on revenge since his introduction."_

_The Third Hokage's expression was unreadable._

_"Hmm... he doesn't, does he?" the man whispered. "Curious... good for him, of course, but still... curious."_

_"Do you think this is something to worry about, Hokage-sama...?" Kakashi said, noticing a faintly concerned tone in the elderly ninja's voice. "If this is a byproduct of the mangekyo..."_

_Hiruzen shook his head._

_"The kaleidoscopic mirror-wheel comes about with a hormonal metamorphosis," he said, "triggered by a certain chemical cocktail released when a sharingan-wielder undergoes a considerable emotional trauma." _

_The Lord Third exhaled a cloud of smoke, pausing thoughtfully. _

_"Among the more troublesome side effects of this transformation is an increased flow of chakra through specific parts of the brain – such as the amygdala, hypothalamus, and hippocampus," he continued. "Over time this causes gradual enlargement of those regions, resulting in unpredictable moodswings and a marked increase of aggressive tendencies."_

_The Professor hummed, meeting Kakashi's eye._

_"So, if anything, I would have expected awakening the mangekyo to greatly strengthen young Sasuke's desire for vengeance. That he should seem _less_ fixated on revenge now than he was before awakening those eyes is very curious..." He trailed off for a moment, staring thoughtfully into the distance, before shaking his head and muttering. "...It is potentially fortuitous, to be certain... but still highly unusual." _

Thinking back on that discussion, Kakashi got the distinct impression that the Sandaime had known more than he said. He did not question it, though.

They were ninja, after all. Secrets were their bread and butter.

Besides, if it was really important for him to know, Kakashi had faith that the Sandaime would see fit to tell him.

The young members of Team Seven were certainly inexplicably skilled, and they acted strangely at times, but the odds of them being spies or plants were infinitesimal, and the chances of them having been getting lessons from outsiders or other suspicious persons were similarly minute.

So for now, at least, Kakashi could give them the benefit of a doubt.

(Naruto's sexy jutsu was _very_ compelling)

* * *

><p>AN: I got a bookshelf for Christmas, among other things (most of them edible in some manner or other). That was a rather nice gift, because now I've got a LOT of the books and manga and DVDs off of my bed.

I've got the first twenty-seven volumes of the Naruto manga on that shelf, as well as the entirety of the original _Naruto_ anime. I've also got the first twenty-one volumes of _Hayate the Combat Butler_ up there, plus the first ten volumes of _Ranma 1/2_, the first five volumes of _Monster Musume: Everyday Life with Monster Girls_, volumes one through twenty-one of _Dragonball_, a few of my _Halo _books, plus five hentai manga in the right hand corner of the bottom-most shelf (three of them by the inimitable Yamatogawa-sensei).

Aside from that, I also have four different DVD box sets stacked on top of the bookshelf (_Red vs. Blue_, _Jurassic Park_, _Lord of the Rings_, _Digimon_). Also, _Harry Potter _books 4-6, the first two _Hobbit_ movies, and the first three seasons of _Legend of Korra_ (the third one I've yet to actually watch the whole way through).

Grandma Karen's up here for the weekend, also, so between Christmas and headaches and that and _Super Smash Bros 3DS_, I haven't had much time for writing. Plus this chapter just did NOT want to get written.

Next chapter, though, will almost CERTAINLY see the start of the Chuunin Exams. _Yaaay!_

**Updated: **12-28-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤

P.S.:

_**HOLY FUCKING SHIT!**_ This fic actually has a page on TV Tropes! It's a very small page, with not much on it, but HOLY CARP. I've been secretly hoping that a fic of mine would get a page or a mention of some sort over there for years, but I can hardly believe it's actually finally happened.

_Many thanks to Nyame to informing of this. _And to all of the tropers reading this, it would be very nice if you could kindly go and work some wiki magic on that page – I have a link it in my profile, under announcements.

I am _so_ damn giddy. Haha! This is one helluva Christmas gift. :D


	9. The Chuunin Exams (about to begin)

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Time passed without much of note happening, despite everything. Team Seven's laissez-faire attitude towards their presence in the past had raised some eyebrows amongst those who didn't know the truth of the situation (which was everyone but them and Hinata), but not much of importance had really changed. Mostly it was little things, like Naruto playing more frequently with Konohamaru and friends, and Sakura introducing Sasuke to her parents.<p>

Despite them both being physically twelve, said introduction was still infinitely less awkward than the _last_ time Sakura had brought her teammate-turned-enemy-turned-teammate-turned-boyfriend-turned-husband-turned-teammate-turned-boyfried home for the first time. Less complicated, too.

And of course, Naruto took no small delight in molding the once-more malleable minds of Udon and Moegi. Konohamaru may have been his faithful protégé even as an adult, but Ebisu had regretfully gotten to the boy's teammates and made them dreadfully _ordinary_. The grown up Udon and Moegi had been two of the most boring people Naruto knew.

(The less said about the Hyuuga, the better)

"Last one to Ichiraku's is a loser!" the former Lord Seventh Hokage jeered, cackling as he shot down the street.

"No fair, boss, wait for us!"

"Ah, Naruto-niichan! Hold up!"

"Heeeey! You cheater! Don't go so fast!"

The Konohamaru Corps chased after their boss/idol, Naruto Uzumaki, following him through the streets of Konoha. Huffing and puffing as they tried to keep up with the faster, seemingly inexhaustible blond, Konohamaru and friends made quite a sight with their ruddy faces screwed up in concentration.

Naruto beamed as he led the young academy students up and down the streets, laughing and whooping as he darted nimbly around pedestrians. He kept a steady pace three strides ahead of the trio at all times, leading the kids on a merry chase through the village.

"Don't be sore losers, now!" Naruto cheerfully called over his shoulder. "Hahaha! Just run, run, run as fast as you can! Maybe you'll even catch up, if you're lucky!"

He peered over his shoulder just in time to see a redfaced Konohamaru reply to this statement with a very rude hand gesture.

Naruto laughed.

"Is that all you've got? Hurry up, hurry up! I haven't even gotten warmed up!" he chortled, striking a very theatrical pose (while continuing to run, which produced a fairly comical effect).

Moegi giggled in spite of herself, and Udon joined in with a half-delirious guffaw.

Konohamaru defiantly shook his fist at Naruto.

The blond laughed even more gaily than before, and spun fluidly around a black-clad young man, slipping between him and his pretty blonde companion. Without missing a beat, he was behind the pair and continuing on down the street.

...at least, he was until he heard a boyish _'Oof!'_, and a distantly familiar annoyed grunt.

"Hey, twerp, watch where you're going! That _hurt_, y'know?"

Oh, Kankuro. Still just as terrible with kids as ever. And still somehow just as good as getting the drop on Naruto, too.

"Ack! Let go of me, you big jerk!"

Naruto turned around, mildly bemused. Was it really starting already? He glanced curiously between Temari and Kankuro, looking at their backs.

This statement did not include Temari's ass to any exceptional degree. Naruto could, as Jiraiya's former apprentice, appreciate beautiful young women, but fifteen years old was toeing the line of _too young_ for his tastes.

(He made a conscious exception for Hinata, because she was his wife, and he loved her no matter WHAT she looked like)

"Konohamaru!" Moegi squealed, dismayed, breaking Naruto out of his musings.

"Oh dear, oh dear..." Udon whimpered, trembling worriedly at the sight of this intimidating foreigner lifting their friend and ringleader by the collar.

Kankuro sneered, and tightened his grip.

"_Konohamaru_, huh?" he drawled. "Is that your name, twerp? Heh, talk about uninspired. You Konoha pansies..."

Temari scowled, impatiently side-eyeing her middle brother.

"Don't waste your time on this brat, Kankuro," she said coolly, evenly. "It wouldn't be worth the trouble."

Kankuro rolled his eyes.

"Who cares? I'm just gonna teach the punk to watch where he's going," he said dismissively. "You could say I'm doing him a favor, really. It's a very valuable life lesson."

Konohamaru swung his legs mutinously. Had his captor been a little less astute, the lad might have scored a hit on the older boy's shin. Kankuro was nothing if not prudent, however, and he deftly evaded the lad's flailing.

"Let — me — GO!" Konohamaru snarled, thrashing angrily but ineffectively.

His increased resistance seemed to rile up Moegi and Udon, who clenched their fists and advanced on the much larger Kankuro. Temari sighed and inched away from her brother, looking like she had no patience for this stupid macho posturing.

Kankuro snorted, and curled his free hand into a fist.

"You should be more respectful to your elders," he sneered, bringing his knuckles up in a blur.

Naruto caught Kankuro's first before it even came close to touching Konohamaru, appearing beside Kankuro faster than you could say _"Holy shit where'd he come from?!"_

The Kazekage's middle child blinked. His head swiveled to the side, and he stared confusedly at this spiky-haired blond interloper. Konohamaru slowed his wriggling, and a smirk came onto his face.

"Hah! You're in for it NOW, you big jerk!" he crowed. "Naruto-niichan is gonna kick your ass!"

Temari choked back a laugh at the gobsmacked expression on her brother's face.

Naruto smiled innocently.

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean by that, Konohamaru," he said loftily. "After all, it's not like a foreign shinobi visiting Konoha for the chuunin exams would _ever_ be stupid enough to try and do anything to the Sandaime's grandson."

His innocent smile widened, and Kankuro blinked twice more. The young puppet master went visibly white under his kabuki facepaint.

"Eh?" he squeaked. "The Sandaime's...?"

He trailed off, staring at Konohamaru in slowly dawning horror.

Temari now looked neither bored _nor_ amused – if anything, she seemed the slightest touch frightened underneath the angry look she shot at her brother.

"Kankuro..." she growled warningly. "I _told _you..."

Now Kankuro went puce, and he dropped Konohamaru like a hot potato.

"Ahaha... now, now, I know what this might look like," he said, his voice cracking, "but it's perfectly innocent, honest!"

Naruto smiled.

"I'm sure it is," he said sweetly. "Just like I'm sure your teammates won't kill you in your sleep for almost getting them kicked out of the village before the exams could even start."

Kankuro paled once more, and Temari fingered the fan strapped to her back with a vicious grin on her face.

Naruto then looked up into the branches of a nearby tree. He grinned brightly.

"Hey, Gaara," he said to the gourd-bearing redhead. "Wanna join me at Ichiraku's for some ramen later? You can bring your team along too, if you want."

He waved, beaming at his fellow jinchuuriki.

Konohamaru, Moegi, and Udon ooh'ed and ahh'ed at Naruto's ability to detect the third foreigner hidden from sight. Temari and Kankuro stared in horrified disbelief at the apparently suicidal blond.

Gaara blinked owlishly, surprised.

* * *

><p><em>"I nominate Team Seven."<em>

The hokage's office fell into a heavy silence following these words. Kakashi Hatake stood at attention in a manner that nonetheless bespoke a deceptive laziness, a kind of disinterested insolence that very few people could pull off, to say nothing of actually getting away with it.

All around him, his fellow jounin expressed their surprise at their colleague's choice to nominate a rookie squad for chuunin examination. The Sandaime had only just finished officially announcing the Chuunin Exams, and already Kakashi was suggesting that his team should take it.

For those who hadn't heard about Team Seven's uncannily exceptional performance on missions, it beggared belief that the Copy Ninja could seriously have such a skewed perspective as to nominate his squad for the exams without even the tiniest sign of hesitation.

...then, a moment later, Kurenai Yuuhi stepped forward and nominated Team Eight, looking perfectly confident in her students' abilities. And not to be outdone, Asuma Sarutobi stepped forward immediately after her and put forth his Team Ten for consideration as well.

It was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop (and Genma looked very sheepish as he picked his senbon back up off the floor, although his jaw was still visibly slack). Not an eye in the house wasn't staring at Kakashi, Kurenai, and Asuma, whether simply gobsmacked and blatantly disbelieving, or else trying in vain to puzzle out their motives.

Hiruzen puffed on his pipe, curiously eyeing the three young jounin leaders. His glance was hooded, his face an unreadable stony mask, and if his eyes lingered a second longer on his son than on the others, then nobody was saying anything.

"Do you, now?" he said, the gravely rasp of his voice cutting through the silence. He folded his hands, humming thoughtfully. "I must say, this is highly unusual. Not one, or even two, but _three_ rookie squads?" He narrowed his eyes. "Are you all quite sure of this? These exams are nothing to sneeze at, as you should well know."

Kakashi scoffed.

"With all due respect, Hokage-sama, I'd be nominating them for **jounin** consideration if you hadn't already told me that they need to pass the chuunin exams first," he said. "Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura are ready for promotion. More than ready."

Asuma rolled his eyes at this.

"I never would've pegged _you_ for the sentimental sort, Kakashi," he drawled, shaking his head. "But as for my team, I honestly think it would be a good learning experience for 'em. Ought to be a good kick in the pants for those slackers," he said wryly, a hint of fondness in his tone. "And I reckon at least one of them might actually make the cut, to be perfectly honest..."

Kurenai afforded a smirk at this remark, her eyes gleaming amusedly.

"Team Eight has really come into its own as well," she said, all but swelling up with pride. "Hinata in particular has demonstrated exceptional maturity and leadership qualities. She's set an excellent example for her teammates, and all three have helped each other grow a good deal."

Well, mostly it had been Hinata helping Shino and Kiba grow, but Kurenai didn't feel any particular need to give away too much of her prize pupil's talent. It wouldn't do to scare off the competition, after all.

Hiruzen took a drag of his pipe, and he cast his gaze over the three jounin sensei. He saw a mixture of pride, confidence, and stubborn determination in each of them. It almost reminded him of his own sensei's eyes, when the man had first confronted the other kage with the idea of the Chuunin Exams, all but outright challenging them to send their best and brightest ninja to try and discredit him and his pupils.

Resisting the urge to smile at the swell of nostalgia, the Sandaime slowly nodded. He exhaled, smoke billowing from his lips, and closed his eyes.

"Well, then," he said. "If you three are that confident in your team's chances—"

Iruka sputtered, unable to hold back his disbelief any longer.

"_This is preposterous!_" he protested, pointing at the three jounin. "You can't honestly be saying you think they're seriously ready to take on the chuunin exams?!"

"Of course they are," Kakashi said dismissively. Kurenai and Asuma nodded in general agreement.

Iruka turned a very interesting shade of red.

"You're pushing them too far!" he exclaimed. "Times are different now than they were when you three were young! Those kids may be your genin, but they're still my students—!"

Hiruzen resisted the urge to sigh as the argument unfolded, Iruka Umino's words coming narrowly close to insubordination. If it weren't for Guy stepping forward in agreement with Iruka's stance, things might have gotten ugly (and Kakashi did NOT pull his punches, whether fighting or debating).

Under other circumstances, Hiruzen may have been inclined to agree with Iruka, but these nine rookies were all _exceptional_ prospects. Even the least remarkable among their number showed a fair deal of talent and cunning.

Iruka was a good man, to be sure, but that wasn't always the most desirable trait in shinobi. It didn't help that this was his first graduating class, either. Iruka was naturally very attached to these kids, and would of course be inclined to have them... well, some might call the man's approach _coddling_, but Hiruzen had a soft spot for children himself.

Kakashi, however, did not appear to agree.

"They're not your students anymore, Iruka," the Copy Ninja finished coolly, with a steely edge to his words. "They are soldiers under my command."

With that verbal slap in the face, Kakashi turned and walked away. Iruka stared as the man went, visibly cringing from those words.

Asuma winced, and he muttered _"Ouch. Low blow,"_ under his breath. Kurenai gave Iruka a sympathetic smile.

"Well, he was a bit harsh in how he said it..." she said, "...but the gist of it isn't necessarily inaccurate. Besides, I know my team has improved by leaps and bounds since graduating. You shouldn't underestimate those former students of yours, or they might just end up surpassing!"

Iruka chuckled weakly, and returned the smile with a slow nod.

"Y-Yeah, thanks..." he said. "He's right, of course. Haha, I guess I'm just a little upset to see them growing up so fast..."

Kurenai gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder, before turning back to sidle up next to Asuma as other jounin sensei proceeded to nominate their own teams for the exams.

* * *

><p>Shino was a quiet sort of fellow. Even when spoken to, he did not talk unless he felt like he had something of genuine importance to say, and he was never needlessly loud; he did not yell or shout or holler. He was subtler than that. When Shino wanted to make himself heard, he simply spoke his mind. If the people he was talking to had any sense, then they would listen to what he had to say. If they didn't, then they clearly weren't worth the trouble.<p>

That's what his father had taught him, anyways. Subtlety and silence were hallmarks of the shinobi – no ninja worth his salt would go off screaming at the top of his lungs. Speak softly yet firmly, and never about trivial matters. People who could be swayed by loud voices and meaningless chatter were not worth a true shinobi's time: that's what he had learned from his father.

Kiba was an idiot, impulsive and obnoxious, and far too quick to anger over little and meaningless things. The hound user practically defaulted to violence as the only worthwhile method of problem solving, and he pretty used his head only as far as physically bashing it against the nearest obstacle. He was loud and fickle and impulsive, the very antithesis of everything Shino had been taught to value in a ninja.

...however, Kiba was also fiercely loyal, as quick to make friends as enemies. He had not been put off by the Aburame _hiden_ like most would have been – rather, he thought it was _"wicked"_, which he would say with a thumbs up and a toothy grin.

Shino had never before encountered someone who could earnestly call his kikaichuu colony _cool_.

It was a rather nice feeling, in all honesty. Kiba was probably the first real friend Shino had ever had outside his own clan. Despite their differences, he and Kiba were fast and true, and as thick as thieves. They butted heads plenty, in their own little ways, but at the end of the day both the Aburame and the Inuzuka highly valued camaraderie. Even if their ideas of it were as different as night and day, loyalty was still something that both prized above all else.

Under other circumstances, Shino supposed that he and Kiba might have been at odds more often than not. Had Hinata not stepped so brilliantly into the position, the two males might have spent a lot of their time both subtly and overtly vying for the spot of team leader. But as it was, Hinata had assumed the role, and she did a magnificent job of it, too. She seemed like a real natural, and neither Kiba or Shino had any problems with deferring to her.

It was funny, in a way, that a girl who had seemed so quiet and reserved in the academy would wind up the distinct superior of someone as competitive and stubborn as Kiba, but Hinata really didn't _need_ to be boastful or aggressive. She led with a soft touch, letting them think as often as not that they were acting of their own initiative when they did as she asked. She indulged them when it was convenient, and kept them in line with carefully chosen compliments and critiques.

She pulled their strings like a puppet master working her marionettes, and most scarily of all she did it so warmly and kindly that neither of them could find any fault with it. Even the willful, bullheaded Kiba saw nothing wrong with doing what Hinata asked of him.

Shino supposed that the Inuzuka probably had a tiny bit of a crush on her.

Not that he could criticize this. He himself felt rather quietly giddy whenever he could sneak a covert glance at Kurenai-sensei, and perhaps intentionally messed up his kata once or twice just so she would correct him. This was only natural, of course. She was a very lovely, very _mature_ woman appointed with teaching and guiding them, and Shino was at that early, pleasantly confusing stage of puberty where he was just starting to really _enjoy_ being around the opposite sex.

However, he also knew that Kurenai and Hinata were each interested in someone else, and that it was very unlikely either of them would ever give him or Kiba the time of day. And Shino was okay with that.

Kiba may have been in denial, though.

"Yeah, I think we're definitely gonna breeze right through this," the tattooed lad quietly boasted as they strolled up to the third floor of the academy. "Those other losers don't stand a chance against me and Akamaru!"

He grinned at Hinata, who smiled indulgently and nodded.

"If you say so, Kiba-kun," she said politely. She spoke his name fondly, like that of a good friend or a close sibling. Kiba _may_ have misinterpreted this.

"You won't even need to get your hands dirty, Hinata," he said, grinning cockily. "I bet there's not a person here who could take me on in a fight!"

This declaration earned Kiba a dirty look from a few of the other genin teams climbing the stairs, but he didn't seem to notice. He was strutting self-assuredly to the testing area, confident that Team Eight would pass these exams with flying colors.

Hinata giggled at the sight of Kiba with his chest puffed out. He beamed, apparently taking this as a mark of approval.

Shino quietly followed his teammates to the testing area, corrugating his brow in thought. Kiba's confidence was not particularly contagious in this instance. Frowning beneath his coat collar, the young Aburame pushed his sunglasses up on the bridge of his nose.

He shot a warning look at his male teammate.

"You shouldn't get too cocky," he cautioned. "These exams will be attracting genin from all across the continent, and many of them will be far more experienced than ourselves. Age and cunning can easily triumph over youth and skill."

Kiba scoffed.

"Don't be such a worrywart, Shino! They aren't the only ones with tricks up their sleeves." He grinned toothily.

Hinata smiled, looking between her two teammates.

"Indeed they are not," she agreed. "You two are very skilled for your age."

Shino and Kiba looked at her.

"Hah!" the latter guffawed. "If we're _skilled_, then you're a damn genius."

Shino nodded. "You're easily the strongest member of this team," he said. "We know this because we've seen you in action."

Kiba blushed.

"Yeah..." he said, scratching his cheek. "You've done some damn good work. Y'know, with your kata and training and all."

"You two have improved markedly more than I have," Hinata said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "My own skills are..."

She shrugged, trailing off. The _'...a result of actually being ten years older than both of you put together'_ went unsaid, and her true meaning passed right over Kiba and Shino's heads. As far as they knew, she was just being modest.

They couldn't possibly appreciate that, out of the four people to have come back in time, Hinata Uzumaki née Hyuuga was actually the least powerful. She was just skilled by the standards of ordinary humans. Compared to monsters like Naruto and Sasuke...

...well, _Hinata_ was just as good as an elite jounin, maybe on par with some of the lower tier kage. In contrast, Sakura was pretty much second in power only to her teammates; theoretically, the pinkette was good enough to go toe-to-toe with Hashirama or Madara at the top of their game.

_"Excuse me, miss, but what might your name be?" _

Well, speak of the devil.

Team Eight came onto into an open area, a landing between stairwells.

They were not the only ones there.

"Sakura...? Oh! A most beautiful name for a most beautiful maiden!" A bowl-cut, black-haired youth in tight green spandex struck a pose that might have been cool two generations prior, standing before the members of Team Seven. "Please, Sakura-san!" he exclaimed. "Will you not go out with me? I swear, I will protect you with my life!"

Naruto snorted, and Sasuke ground his teeth. Shino quirked a single eyebrow, and Kiba glowered at Hinata's other friends. Team Eight went unnoticed by the trio, who were focused understandably on the green-clad lad.

Kiba skulked sulkingly up the stairs, clearly not in the mood for a meeting with Team Seven right now. Shino followed him, only mildly interested in the romantic dramedy proceeding below them.

Hinata lingered behind for only a moment, before turning to follow her teammates up to the third floor. She blew a kiss to Naruto, who looked over his shoulder and silently smiled at her.

And so now we join Team Seven _in media res_.

Sakura tittered and curtseyed, smiling kindly at the athletic older boy. She did not give any indication of having noticed Hinata and friends passing on through, smiling politely at Rock Lee (for this was, of course, who addressed her).

"Oh, _my!_ You flatter me, Lee-kun," she said. "But I'm afraid to say that I am already spoken for. You have my apologies." A twinkle came into her eye, the glittering mischief of a precocious matchmaker as she stood back up from her curtsey. "Perhaps you should try looking a little closer to home?" she suggested, thinking of a certain teammate of his.

Lee cocked his head to one side, staring at Sakura uncomprehendingly.

"You are... spoken for, already?" he said, sounding miserably disappointed.

Sakura's smile softened, and she felt a pang of sympathy for the poor, impressionable lad. He couldn't really help being such a sucker for a pretty face.

(And Sakura was _very _pretty, in her personal opinion, so Lee could hardly help himself!)

"I'm sorry," she told him, smiling sincerely. "You seem like a very nice guy, and I'm sure there's a girl _somewhere_ out there who would be glad to have you. Maybe even someone you already know?" she suggested again, thinking of a certain brunette.

Sasuke resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Sakura had been insisting for **years** that Lee and Tenten could make a perfect couple, and nothing he said could dissuade her from this notion. She was very stubborn when it came to matters of romance, and Naruto did not help things on that front, either. If anything, the blond had taken to egging Sakura on, and encouraging her more troublesome matchmaking proclivities.

Sasuke himself could not give less of a damn about other people's sex lives, but Naruto and Sakura were always hatching harebrained schemes to pair off their friends and acquaintances. At least two marriages had come about as a direct result of their machinations – Chouji and Karui, and Kiba and Tamaki – plus a number of brief flings and one-night stands.

He could still remember their rather disastrous go at hooking up Shino with Kiba's sister; by the time the dust had settled, nearly thirty people were in need of hospitalization, and several million ryo in property damage had been done.

And that was just the first date.

Sasuke fought down a shudder, and decided that it would be in everyone's best interests for him to intervene NOW. For every happy couple to result from Naruto and Sakura's compulsive matchmaking, there were a half dozen explosive break ups, and more than a few strongly worded restraining orders.

He was not in the mood to see what kind of drama could erupt from a self-destructed LeeTen relationship.

"_Lee_," the Uchiha heir growled the taijutsu specialist's name. "Weren't you going to challenge me to a spar?"

Lee blinked. He frowned, and turned to stare at Sasuke.

"Was I?" he said confusedly, looking a touch skeptical as he glanced down at Sasuke's missing arm. A frown tilted his eyebrows, curling his lips downward. "Hm, I don't know..."

"Of course you were," Sasuke said flippantly. "Why else would you come seek us out?"

"Maybe he wanted to challenge _me_," Naruto interjected, a glimmer of laughter in his eyes. "I'd like to think my reputation really precedes me these days."

Sakura snorted, a most unladylike noise.

"Yeah, right," she said. "The only reputation _you_ have is as a class clown."

"And I am hilarious," he said with a grin.

"Hilariously full of yourself, maybe," Sasuke said, rolling his eyes.

Naruto scoffed. "Oh, please. Like you're one to talk."

Sakura smirked, and wrapped an arm around the raven-haired Uchiha's waist.

"_I_ wouldn't mind being full of you, dear," she purred into Sasuke's ear, giving him an all-too-suggestive wink.

Lee went beet red, and averted his gaze anxiously away. Sasuke, for his part, shivered and smiled weakly at his once and future wife.

Naruto rolled his eyes.

"I think that's what most girls our age would say," he quipped. "If, y'know, they had the guts."

Sasuke made a face. "I don't know," he muttered. "Some of those fangirls were pretty forward, last time around... and that's before even counting the likes of _Karin_."

Naruto looked momentarily confused at this statement.

"Maaan, really?" he said thoughtfully, too low for Lee to hear. "Damn, I'd almost forgotten... by the time I got to know her, she and Suigetsu were pretty much already an item."

"It's surreal, isn't it?" Sakura whispered in agreement, softly giggling. "To think that dumpy, mothering housewife used to be one of Sasuke-kun's most aggressive fangirls..."

"She mellowed out a _lot_ after the first few kids," said Sasuke with a nod of agreement. "Thank god."

Sakura nodded, and tightened her arm around Sasuke's waist. With a playful grin, she leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek.

"How many was she on?" she wondered meaningfully. "I can't seem to recall."

"Last I heard, she and Suigetsu were trying for a seventh," Sasuke said, a hint of disbelief in his expression. "Lord only knows how she kept all those brats fed."

"She always wanted a big family, though," Naruto interjected. "Or so she told me, at least."

"Yeah, I think she said something similar to me, too," Sakura nodded. "And I suppose Suigetsu could make a decent amount of money with his mercenary work."

"He participated in lots of medical experiments, too, I understand," Naruto added.

"Really?" Sasuke cocked an eyebrow. "That's a surprise to me."

The blond shrugged. "He said it was nostalgic."

Sakura pulled a face.

"That is _so_ weird."

"I know, right?"

"Always knew that guy was messed up."

Sasuke snorted back a laugh.

Lee was at a loss for words as he watched Team Seven carry on talking. He stared, rooted in place by an awkward mix of indecision and politeness, as the trio turned to continue up the stairs, seemingly forgetting him completely.

He blinked owlishly.

"...I wonder what Sakura-san meant by _'someone closer to home'_?" he quietly puzzled. "Hm. Perhaps I should ask Tenten? Maybe she'll know something about it."

As Sasuke, Sakura, and Naruto disappeared up the stairs, Lee turned and left to look for his own teammates.

"They _are_ both girls, after all..."

* * *

><p>Tensions in the waiting room were dreadfully high. Genin squads crowded every inch of the room, many of the older ones surly and antsy and just itching to see some blood. Ninja from all over the continent were there, representatives from villages as far-flung as Suna and Ame, eager to bust some heads and prove their worth.<p>

Most of these genin were a fair deal older and more experienced than the Rookie Nine – even Team Guy had only been in active duty for a year and change, to say nothing of cells Seven, Eight, and Ten. But most of the other competitors were hardened, battle-tested shinobi, and almost none of them had any patience for little children.

Ino Yamanka did not seem aware of this, as she scanned the room for her crush. She was standing with her teammates, Shikamaru and Chouji, not too far from the entrance. Pale blue eyes flicked sharply over the crowd, clear and penetrating as they searched for Sasuke Uchiha.

A civilian might have been unnerved by Ino's eyes, with their unnaturally pale blue irises, flat and ghostly, devoid of pupils. If eyes were the window to the soul, then young Ino looked like a woman possessed.

Shikamaru would have considered this an accurate descriptor, at least whenever she got started on _Sasuke-kun_.

"He's not here yet," the shadow-user drawled, leaning boredly against a nearby wall. "We would've noticed him by now if he'd gotten here before us, and we've seen everyone who has come through that door since we arrived."

Ino shot Shikamaru a dark look, narrowing her eyes and curling her lip. She fidgeted anxiously, clearly overcome with nervous energy.

"I don't need your snark, Shikamaru!" she sniped, flicking her gaze over to the door. "Just keep your eyes open. I don't want to miss him."

Chouji shrugged, looking over his shoulder at some of the other teams in the room.

"Who's to say they'll be coming? Maybe their sensei doesn't think they're ready for these exams yet," he suggested.

Shikamaru sighed.

"As much as I wish that was the case, Chouji," he muttered, "if only so Ino would settle down and quit looking for him, we _know_ they'll be here. Asuma told us that Kakashi was the first one to nominate his squad, remember?"

Chouji got a thoughtful expression on his face, and he slowly nodded his head.

"Oh yeah, that's right," he said. "I'd nearly forgotten about that." He cocked his head, looking askance at one of the other Konoha teams. "Huh. I dunno, then. Maybe one of them didn't feel up to taking the exams? Asuma-sensei told us it was an all or nothing sort of deal – y'know, that you need to be in a team of three to participate."

"Sasuke-kun is more than ready for these exams!" Ino hissed, giving Chouji the evil eye. She took a deep breath, slowly shaking her head. "He was never the sort to back down from a challenge, back when we were all at the academy. I don't see why he would feel the need to start _now_."

"And Naruto's too dense to even consider that the Chuunin Exams might be too much for him," Shikamaru drawled, eliciting a nostalgic chuckle from Chouji. "He's not the brightest, or the strongest, or the most skilled, but that moron's as stubborn as all get out."

Ino frowned, her expression darkening.

"You don't think _Sakura_ would choose to hold Sasuke-kun back, do you?" she said. "I know those two have been getting close, but if she thinks I'll forgive her for something like that..." She clenched her fists, and her eyes flashed.

Shikamaru sighed, and he rolled his eyes.

_Women_, he thought ruefully. _Whether they're young or old, they're all just as much of a pain in my ass..._

Ino shot him a sour look, guessing well enough what her teammate was thinking.

"Don't you start, Shikamaru," she said warningly. "You're not any better!"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," he replied blandly. "I didn't say a word."

"You were _thinking_ it," she growled. "I know what you're like."

Chouji chuckled goodnaturedly, and reclined against the wall.

The door opened.

Kiba Inuzuka strutted cockily into the room, followed shortly by Shino and Hinata.

Then he took one look around the room, and his self-assured demeanor promptly deflated, punctured by the weight of several dozen cold, assessing glares.

"...hot _damn_, are all of these guys seriously genin...?" he mumbled, suddenly looking much less certain of acing the exam.

"Yes, probably," said Hinata calmly, sparing a reassuring smile for her teammate.

Kiba reciprocated only weakly, looking now like he wanted nothing more than for everyone's scrutiny to fall on someone else.

Nobody seemed to notice Shino.

* * *

><p>AN: Blargh, I got sick a week or so ago, and got like no writing done for a while. I'm not sure how this chapter turned out, but hopefully it was worth the wait.

BTW, I have been a minor LeeTen shipper for years – since even before Neji was killed off, haha. I've never really done anything with it, but it just seems like a funny/cute couple to me. Not that this statement is likely to have much relevance to _this_ particular fic. _Perish the thought!_

On an unrelated note, I absolutely despise character bashing, which can make it rather painful to trawl through the _Harry Potter_ section nowadays. I don't know how or why this is particularly relevant. I am _quite_ drowsy at the moment of typing this.

Also, I still am a little amazed at how quickly this fic's popularity has grown. It's already the second most popular thing I've ever written.

Crazy, isn't it?

**Updated: **1-11-14

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	10. Don't Be Afraid! Tests Can Smell Fear!

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

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><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Kabuto Yakushi was cool and collected as he scanned over the assembled genin. Team Seven walked in through the door, and as expected their arrival caused quite a stir. The trio thumbed their noses at everyone in the room, all but outright saying that they would personally kick every single one of their asses.<p>

This, of course, did not go over well with the other assembled genin. Black glares like leaden weights fell on Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura, each of whom acted perfectly unperturbed by the icy looks they were receiving. If anything, they seemed almost _amused_ by this attempted intimidation.

It was exactly the opening Kabuto had been waiting for. He walked up to the nine rookie genin, mentally getting into character as he approached. Outwardly, he projected a harmless, friendly air which could let him get close to his targets without raising any suspicions. He radiated an aura of inoffensive normalcy that enabled him to slip under the radar with ease.

Nobody paid any attention to Kabuto, because he wasn't anyone worth taking note of.

That was the most important skill for a spy. Being able to blend into any crowd with minimal effort was a very rare gift – most people had tells that gave it away when they were trying to keep a secret, got anxious or tense in high stress situations. But Kabuto could go behind enemy lines with a disarming smile plastered on his face, make nice with people who would kill him in an instant if they knew his true motives, act perfectly ordinary and unremarkable.

Some people thought of spies as people dressed all in black, fighting off hordes of enemies and running across rooftops under the cover of night. And while Kabuto had done such things once or twice, the mark of a truly good spy was the ability to have yourself seen but not scrutinized, to register in people's minds as nothing unusual or suspicious. You had to act like you belonged wherever you were.

Kabuto was a master of the mundane and banal. He could smile and chat about meaningless things, lead a conversation wherever he wished, and have no one be any the wiser. That was just how good he was.

Getting the trust of some rank genin would be no problem for a spy of his skill. He could give them some harmless advice, dazzle them with his knowledge, while still emphasizing his clusminess and ineptitude. The best spy was the man nobody looked at twice, and Kabuto was a master of going overlooked.

There was no reason to think his cover could be blown by these greenhorn brats. His mission in the Leaf was nearing its end, and soon enough he would be more use to Lord Orochimaru outside of the village. Once the invasion was carried out, there would be no more need for him to stay undercover in Konoha.

The ninja info cards he showed those Ino-Shika-Cho brats were nothing extraordinary by his standards. It was a mere parlor trick that could be pulled off by any sufficiently astute genin, and Kabuto did not put any of the _truly_ valuable intel on those things. Any ninja cryptanalyst worth their salt would be able to work around his chakra encryption – anyone who got suspicious of him and tried to search those cards for sensitive information would find only data which could have been reasonably gathered through hearsay and rumors.

Kabuto was cautious. He kept most of his best cards up his sleeves, hiding a couple aces even from Orochimaru. He showed only what he wanted people to say, played the folks around him like a fiddle, and guilelessly leaked top secret intelligence to the single most dangerous rogue-nin on the planet.

Akatsuki may have had more powerful shinobi, but none of them could rival Orochimaru's duplicitous cunning. He was the snake in the grass, waiting hidden in plain sight, patiently learning and plotting as he calculated the best moment to bare his fangs and strike. Orochimaru was clever and unscrupulous, willing and able to play a much longer game than anyone else.

Kabuto learned espionage from the master of lies, a man who spoke with a forked silver tongue. He could deceive the most canny man alive, and walk away without an ounce of suspicion attached to himself. Even if caught all but redhanded, he could smoothly and spotlessly bullshit his way out trouble.

He had been in the spy business from a young age, and had been considered so good at what he did that he was just too dangerous to be left alive. He lived his life in a web of lies and half-truths so tangled that nobody alive knew so much as even his true name. He was a weapon created by the machinations of the shinobi world, a man with no past and no name, a cursed Muramasa which had turned upon its former masters, forged in deceit and tempered in treachery, bathed in blood and shadow.

He was a ninja in the most classical sense, a spy in plain sight, and a killer none would suspect. He thumbed his nose at the likes of Danzo "_Shinobi no Yami_" Shimura and walked a razor's edge under the scrutinizing gaze of Lord Orochimaru. To even suggest he would slip up in the presence of mere children would be laughable.

The kids didn't suspect him, no. He lied to their faces, endearing himself to them with a harmless demeanor and unassuming grin. He played his role to the letter, and they danced on his strings without a hint of deviation. Word for word, his meeting with them went exactly as he had planned.

He did not make any mistakes. He did everything he set out to do in approaching them, convincing the genin of teams Seven, Eight, and Ten that he was their _friend_, and meant only to help them. Even young genius Shikamaru clearly suspected nothing: they saw only what Kabuto wanted them to.

...or so he had thought. So he had planned it out in his head.

But the moment he brought out his ninja info cards, Sasuke snorted and called them _"a cute trick,"_ while Sakura shamelessly snatched them from his hand, asking if he had any cards about her.

Kabuto could only blink owlishly at his now-empty hands. He stared at his palms for a second, before whipping his head up to watch the pinkette effortlessly reveal the contents of his ninja info cards. And while this was no great feat, it still irked him a little to see someone as inexperienced as her treat his chakra encryption like it wasn't even so much as a mild inconvenience.

He bit back a scowl as Sakura sorted through his cards and Sasuke gently pushed a very clingy Yamanaka heiress off of his person ("Oh, Sasuke-kun❤ Even with just one arm, I know you're good enough to beat everyone here❤"). He watched Naruto peek over Sakura's shoulder, humming occasionally, or nodding his head, as he looked over the cards.

"Hey, I think I remember that guy," he said to one card, and, "Wow, those are some shitty stats," he commented on another. "I wonder how up-to-date ours are?"

The way he said this last sentence set up a small, paranoid warning flag somewhere in the back of Kabuto's mind. But before he could think any more on the intonation of the blond's words, Sasuke interjected with a scoff.

"If he had our real stats on those cards, he wouldn't be acting so condescending," the Uchiha said, shooting a seemingly _amused_ look at Kabuto, with an expression like he was watching a foolish child try to climb a tree that was much too tall for them.

Naruto hummed thoughtfully at this, and Kiba rankled at the implication of Sasuke's words, snapping, "Team Eight is gonna leave you losers in the dust!"

Young Hinata giggled at this, her eyes twinkling, and Shino's expression was unreadable.

"You shouldn't underestimate them," she said to her teammate. "Naruto-kun and his friends are very strong."

Kiba seemed to wince at this statement, and he shot a glare at Naruto as if the boy was somehow solely to blame for Hinata's high opinion of Team Seven. Shino put a hand on the Inuzuka's shoulder, earning himself a scowl from the boy and a short growl from his dog.

Chouji was eyeing Akamaru with a thoughtful look, as though sizing up a Christmas goose, and Ino was alternating between glaring at Sakura and making doe eyes at Sasuke. Shikamaru looked like he wanted nothing more than to find himself a nice quiet corner and be rid of all this noise, but a look from Ino stopped him from wandering off.

Sakura's face lit up as she spotted a card with her picture on it, and she held it up to the light as though checking for a watermark. Naruto took one look at the card and let out a laugh.

"Oh, _wow_," he said, his eyes gleaming with mirth. "He's got your measurements right there for everyone to see!"

For an moment Kabuto was bemused by this statement, but he was distracted from his confusion by the sudden thought that Sasuke was going to snap and rip out his throat, judging by the look on the boy's face. But then Sakura lightly swatted Naruto on the back of the head and told him not to go spouting off bald-faced lies, which greatly lessened the intensity of Sasuke's death glare.

Kabuto couldn't help but feel relieved at that.

Sakura, turning her attention back to the card, gave the listed stats a scrutinizing glance.

"Let's see..." she muttered. "Ninjutsu rated at two... taijutsu as a one... three point five genjutsu, that's _almost_ close to accurate... strength, speed, and stamina are all listed around a one? Wow, that is _really_ off."

"Man, those are all way outdated," Naruto remarked, letting out a laugh.

"Definitely," Sasuke remarked, and he shot Kabuto an almost amused look. There was a smile in his onyx eyes that both galled and relieved the spy.

At least Sasuke no longer looked ready to kill him.

That was definitely a plus.

Ino looked torn between taking the piss out of Sakura for the girl's apparent boasting and agreeing unconditionally with whatever Sasuke was saying. The internal conflict was visible on her face, and after several seconds she finally settled for a weak, half-hearted chuckle.

Shikamaru cocked an eyebrow at the members of Team Seven, before sighing and muttering something that sounded a lot like "Troublesome." Kiba looked a mix of perplexed and disgruntled, and Shino stood quietly at the edge of the group.

"I wonder what he has on Naruto-kun?" Hinata posed the question with a guileless smile, opal eyes twinkling at the blond in question. Naruto reciprocated with a small, relaxed smile that gradually widened into a toothy, blinding gallery of a grin.

This seemingly harmless inquiry from Hinata caused Kabuto to feel a pang of irrational worry and try to recall what, _exactly_, he had on the card. He'd made a few separate versions of Naruto's info card, with various degrees of classified information on them, and while he was _pretty sure_ that the only one he had in this deck was the safe, innocuous one with zero classified intel, his more obsessive compulsive tendencies raised a shadow of a doubt.

He maintained his innocent smile, quelling the silent fretting with practiced ease. He knew for a fact that _those_ cards were kept somewhere secure, but unless he had it right before his eyes a small part of his brain would always give into the anxiety. If there was even the tiniest margin of room for doubt, Kabuto would invariably worry himself spare.

He needed to be certain everything was in its proper place, had to check and reassure himself that nothing had changed while he wasn't looking. It was awful, not feeling like you could even trust your own mind, but Kabuto's line of work had taught him to second guess everything.

Kabuto quietly took a deep breath, telling himself to calm down even as he kept the smile on his face. His expression did not falter, not even once. He hid his doubts with a practiced ease.

He watched Sakura shuffle through the deck for a few more seconds until she found what she was looking for.

"Here it is!" she said cheerfully, holding up the card.

It contained a copy of Naruto's first go at an identification photo, hands and face painted white and red in flashy Kabuki style. A few of the other rookies snorted or sniggered at the picture, while Naruto smiled and bowed, as if answering to the cheers of an adoring audience.

"Thank you, thank you!" Naruto said with a chortle, gesturing theatrically. Hinata giggled, and Sakura guffawed at the picture.

"Oh god, I thought you were joking about that," she said, pointing at the picture. "You seriously tried to get that registered as your ID photo?"

Naruto beamed.

"I did indeed!" he declared proudly. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for that meddling old man."

Sasuke choked back a swear and shot Naruto an evil look.

"Oh, you complete and utter bastard," he said. "_You're_ the one who put those kids up to it!"

Naruto did not deny this. He simply flashed a grin at him.

Kabuto stared blankly, however, feeling a sudden rush of paranoia. He did a good job at hiding his worry, but only his Foundation training and extensive medical knowledge managed to keep him from hyperventilating as he stared at the ninja info card in Sakura's hand.

He had not made _any_ cards using that image.

(Sakura suppressed a mischievous snicker at the flash of worry on Kabuto's face, and she shared a knowing grin with Naruto)

It was at this point that Ibiki came in with the other examiners, barking orders at the genin and drawing all attention to himself before any fights could break out. Kabuto took this chance to snatch his cards back from Sakura's hands, trying to hide his sudden anxiety with a friendly smile that came out looking more like a pained grimace.

"Listen up, you maggots!" Ibiki barked. "These are the Chuunin Exams, not some namby-pamby tea party!" He shot a piercing look at Team Seven, in particular, who were smiling far too innocently for his liking. "You will shut up, do as I say, and pray to whatever gods you might believe in that I don't decide to come over their and shove a boot up your ass! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"

Sakura chuckled at this show of intimidation the interrogator was putting on. It was amusing to her, not least of which because she knew old Ibiki Morino to be a great big fluffy teddybear when he wasn't on-duty. She caught Naruto, Hinata, and Sasuke's eyes, and they smiled at her.

Clearly, they shared her opinion.

The other examiners led the crowd of anxious examinees into the testing room and instructed them on where to sit. Teams were split up, and genin were seated in a seemingly random arrangement.

Hinata made a little game of trying to guess which of the test-takers were chuunin plants as she waited to be seated. So far she had marked three likely candidates, as well as a few more maybes. She didn't recognize most of the Leaf ninja here, outside a select memorable few – either they had changed considerably with age, or (more likely) had died in the Sand-Sound invasion, or one of the other subsequent conflicts.

She frowned at this depressing thought, and glanced curiously over at Sasuke.

Her husband's best friend was the sort of man who kept his thoughts close to his chest, and not many people could accurately read him. Hinata was one of them, with the insight of her byakugan, and Naruto was another, with ninshu and his preternatural empathy. Sakura, of course, knew Sasuke best – the man couldn't have hidden anything from his wife, not even if he wanted to. She could read him like an open book.

Hinata idly watched an examiner point Sasuke to an allocated desk behind an older Konoha genin. She saw his eyes travel over the room as he walked to his seat, scanning over the Rookie Nine, and Team Guy, and the Sand Siblings, and the Oto-nin too. Onyx orbs fell at last on Kabuto Yakushi and his teammates.

The flicker of emotion that passed across his face was so slight, and so quick, that barely anyone could have caught it. Hinata did, though, and she felt the urge to sigh.

_Please watch your temper, Sasuke... Naruto told you to refrain from doing anything rash._

Almost as though he heard this thought, Sasuke shot a glower at Hinata as he reached his desk. She frowned at him as he sat down, silently reminding him that it would be imprudent to kill or maim someone who was ostensibly a fellow Konoha shinobi.

He rolled his eyes at her, but seemed to get the message.

Hinata smiled, relieved, and went to her assigned desk as well. It felt distantly familiar, and sure enough Naruto was seated beside her a minute later. This was a bit of a surprise. The odds of their seating arrangements being the same now as they were last time were phenomenally low, according to Sakura, but here they were all the same, in the very same spots they'd had last time.

Naruto met her eyes, and she saw that he noticed this as well. Their elbows brushed together for a split second, and she heard her husband's voice in her head.

_"Sakura knows a lot about math, but I guess she doesn't know everything."_

He felt a bit smug in this thought. Hinata resisted the urge to smile – Naruto had been the most stubborn doubter of Sakura's assertions.

_"I think she was working under the assumption that our seating arrangements were randomly selected,"_ she thought back. _"Or else that the process for determining them used variables which would be altered by our changed actions in the past."_

She could feel the moment of incomprehension in her husband's mind, and she could see his face screwing up in thought – not the face he wore with this thirteen year old body, but the face of the Seventh Hokage, the man who had fathered her children, and not the boy she'd long ago had a crush on.

She giggled inwardly, thinking of how cute he looked when he was puzzled. A fraction of a second later, recognition zipped through Naruto's brain, and he mentally beamed at her.

_"That makes sense,"_ he thought. _"Sakura'll probably be annoyed that her theory didn't hold true, though."_

Hinata's mind brushed Naruto's, and warm affection seeped into his awareness like butterfly kisses dancing across his cheeks. She felt a thrum of happiness, the emotions she had come to associate with the reflexive impulse of matewifewomanMINE.

_"She's a scientist," _she assured her husband. _"One disproven theory just means a chance to explore alternate hypotheses." _

_"If you say so,"_ Naruto thought back, feeling a tad skeptical.

The link broke, and Hinata shrugged. Naruto smiled, and returned his attention to Ibiki.

They were given their instructions, and told about how their tests would be graded. Once the pertinent questions had been answered, he then instructed them to turn over the exam sheets on their desks and begin.

The Seventh Hokage took one look at his exam sheet and felt the urge to laugh.

Only half of the problems made no sense to him, this time! That was a _considerable_ improvement.

Cheerfully, Naruto began to jot down answers to the questions he knew.

Elsewhere in the room, Sasuke breezed through his test with relative ease. While he hadn't known any of this stuff the last time around, by now he felt fairly confident with everything but the math problems – and what kind of ninja would waste time mentally calculating the trajectory of their shuriken, anyway? That was the kind of thing you just had to grasp intuitively.

Also, he had never liked word problems.

Hinata, as well, could answer most of these questions without cheating (although she did use her byakugan to check her work against the suspected plants). She consciously left the left side of her desk unguarded, leaving her free arm below the quiz sheet. Catching Naruto's eye with a carefully measured _scritch-scritch_ of her pencil, she saw him inconspicuously copy her answers from his peripheral vision.

The exchange of data was subtle, made to look perfectly natural. If anyone looked closely enough to notice Naruto's eyes scanning a little far to the right every so often, they might have dismissed it as a trick of the light. He wrote his answers in a perfect act of diligence, giving off the impression of someone who was honestly working through the test.

The key to getting away with cheating was knowing how to look like you weren't cheating.

...not that the author is speaking from _experience_, or anything.

Ahem.

And of course, Sakura finished answering the first nine questions before even five minutes had passed. Then she turned her paper over and began lazily doodling a **very** graphic love scene on the back of her test. She smiled dreamily, drawing a strikingly good representation of her husband as an adult making hard and hungry love to herself as an adult.

Halfway through drawing the picture, Sakura got a wicked smirk on her face and started drawing in an unmistakable adult Ino..._ making out with Sakura's adult self_.

She had just been putting the finishing touches on adult!Ino's hands when she felt the familiar sensation of her friend's mind transfer jutsu taking hold. Repressing a devilish snigger, Sakura permitted the technique to take hold.

Ino-in-Sakura's-body stared at the back of the pinkette's test sheet for three whole seconds before she properly registered what she was looking at.

Then, naturally, she leaped out of her seat and shrieked hysterically. Sasuke rolled his eyes, knowing the examiners would probably deduct a few points for this outburst, while Naruto snickered, detecting the mortified embarrassment rushing from Ino!Sakura.

"Sit back down and shut your mouth, or you and your team are disqualified!" Ibiki barked, shooting an intimidating glare at the possessed pinkette.

Ino obediently did as asked, and was so flustered that she wound up reversing the mind transfer jutsu before ever actually managing to get a look at Sakura's answers.

Tsunade's apprentice indulged in a victorious smirk when she regained control of her body.

* * *

><p>Soon enough, Ibiki ordered the test-takers to put down their pencils and listen up. They did so obediently, the fear of God having by now been well-instilled in them by the terrifying man. He then proceeded to give them all the same ultimatum as last time: opt out now and retake the exams next time, or accept the question and risk never being able to take the Chuunin Exams again if you get it wrong.<p>

Sasuke rolled his eyes at how quickly people started folding. It was pathetic, as far as he was concerned. Anyone with half a brain could see that this was just a bluff – the Chuunin Exams were an international affair, and Ibiki wasn't even _that_ high-ranking. Examiner or not, he didn't actually have the authority to follow through on that threat.

...Not for the foreigners, at least.

(He pointedly ignored a dim recollection of himself falling for this act the last time around)

Sasuke scanned his eyes over the room, looking curiously at Naruto. He could recall the blond having an outburst the first time around, and wondered what his teammate would do now. As much as he respected Naruto, he couldn't help but worry that his friend would do something spectacularly idiotic.

They HAD rather extensively debated the merits of various approaches, and how they would handle this whole time traveling headache, after all. Sakura had explained the multiverse theory to them, which provided a hope that they could somehow find a way back to the timeline they had come from, and also convinced Naruto that they shouldn't try too hard to recreate their past actions.

_"All of this, all these events and stuff—" the blond said, gesturing around at his old apartment, which had been destroyed in Pain's invasion. "—happened over twenty years ago from our point of view. I don't know about you guys, but I can barely remember the specifics of everything I did_ two _years ago. It's been so damn long since we last went through all this stuff..."_

_Naruto shrugged. _

_"There's no way we can recall every little detail, right?" Sasuke said shrewdly. "Like what we ate on this day, or who we talked to on that day. Even a small divergence could wind up cascading into huge changes, and this world is a distant childhood memory for us."_

_"Don't you think we should at least try though?" Hinata said, frowning a tad thoughtfully._

_Naruto chuckled, and gave his wife a teasing wink._

_"I think it's a bit late for you to be saying that," he chirped._

_Hinata gave her husband a look, and gently swatted him on the shoulder._

_"Oh, you."_

_Sakura cocked her head to one side, looking thoughtful. _

_"I hate to admit it, but Naruto does make a good point," she conceded. "I don't really remember when we first got that mission to Wave, for instance. I mean, I'm __**pretty sure**__ Sasuke was there, but otherwise...?" She paused, then, furrowing her brow. "Um... he WAS there, right?"_

_Naruto frowned._

_"I think so?" he said. "Didn't he die for a little bit there?"_

_"I do believe I would remember if I had _died_, Naruto," Sasuke replied dryly._

_"No, no, I'm sure of it!" Naruto replied. "That was the first time I tapped into Kurama's chakra, though I don't think I actually knew it at the time. But I remember you taking an attack meant for me and falling to the ground – you had needles sticking everywhere out of your body and you weren't moving – remember? We were trapped inside those ice mirrors—"_

_"Ah, that sounds familiar," Sasuke said, a hint of recognition in his eyes. "We were fighting... Zabuza's apprentice? Shiro... something or other. I think that was their name."_

_"Haku, actually," Naruto corrected, smiling wistfully. "He was one of the most kind-hearted people I'd ever met, and that talk I had with him in the woods was a major turning point in my world philosophy."_

_There was a gleam in his eyes as he spoke, and he looked about ready to go off on a world of cardboard speech. Hinata cut him off, placing a hand on his shoulder and distracting him with a soft peck on the cheek._

_Sasuke frowned._

_"Are you sure you've got that right?" he murmured "I thought you said this guy __**killed**__ me."_

_"Well, it _looked_ like you were dead, but I think he really just used acupressure or something to put you in a near-death state," Naruto said._

_"Oh, so they only ALMOST killed me," Sasuke muttered rolling his eyes. "That's a _world_ of difference."_

_"Tons of people have almost killed you," Sakura pointed out, grabbing his hand and smiling. _

_"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" _

_"No," she told him, and there was a gleam of mischief in her eyes now. "__**This**__ is."_

_And then she kissed him._

Sasuke hummed to himself, distracted by guiltily pleasant memories, and he almost didn't notice it when Anko busted in through the window. Unfortunately for the last Uchiha, she most CERTAINLY noticed him, as well as the expression on his face.

While Sasuke still felt a little uncertain as to whether it was really _okay_ for him to still enjoy kissing and holding his wife now that they were both reverted to around the physical age of thirteen, he would be lying if he said that going back in time had made her any less amazing of a kisser, or had made that magnificent brain of hers any less sexy. And lost as he was in distracted recollections of some especially sweet smooching, he happened to have somewhat of a... well, _blush_ on his face.

(Sakura was a VERY aggressive kisser)

Unfortunately for Sasuke, Anko happened to see this blush, and to notice him staring straight ahead – seemingly right at **her**.

The impish special jounin's eyes lit up like the Christmas tree from Hell even as Ibiki informed her that she was early. She grinned a toothy, devilish smile which promised mischief and mayhem for anyone foolish enough to cross her path, and it was with quite a smug look on her face that she turned to Ibiki and called him out on letting so many kids pass the first phase.

Naruto and Sakura were very amused to notice this.

Sasuke would be considerably less so, when he found out.

* * *

><p>AN: Here's another chapter, and that's the first phase of the exams down! I didn't cover it terribly in depth, but then there's really not much you could say about it that I didn't already in this chapter.

I am somewhat amused by the thought that even a grown up Hokage Naruto would only be able to get about half of the questions on that test – _"The Three R's? What's that, some kind of ramen?"_

:P

**Updated: **1-20-15

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


	11. Orochimaru's No Good, Very Bad Idea

**I Am NOT Going Through Puberty Again!**

or

A _Naruto _crackwut

By

EvilFuzzy9

* * *

><p>Rating: T...ish<p>

Genre: Humor/Parody

Characters/Pairings: Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Hinata; [NaruHina, SasuSaku]

Summary: Our heroes did not come from a future where everything has gone horribly wrong. They did not travel back in time to save the world from a bleak or miserable fate. As a matter of fact, all they want to do is find a way back home as soon as possible. [cracky, epilogue-compliant time travel fic]

* * *

><p>Everyone who had passed stage one of the exams was given directions to a training ground on the far edge of the village, a training ground in the thickest and wildest part of the forest that crept up to the heel of the village walls.<p>

Those Konoha genin who had been around the block a time or two cast nervous glances at one another when they heard the designation of the area where they would be undergoing the second phase of the test. Training Ground Forty-Four was well known among the more experienced ninja, and it did NOT have a nice reputation.

Naruto was pouting as he watched Shino and Kiba basically drag his wife away. Hinata waved goodbye to him, and he waved back, but he still had a touch of a sour expression on his face as he and his own teammates headed to the area outside the Forest of Death. His hands were in his pockets, and he was practically sulking.

Sasuke's expression was grimmer than usual, his eyes steely and his jaw squarely set as marched ahead of Naruto and Sakura. He was intermittently fingering his shuriken holster and adjusting his forehead protector, looking coolly determined. He seemed oblivious to the way Anko had been looking at him, like a rattlesnake spying an especially juicy rat, and he barely even looked at his teammates as they made their way down the village streets along with the other participants.

His mind was clearly on very serious matters... or at least matters he took very seriously.

Dark eyes glanced furtively around, suspiciously eyeing several of the foreign genin. Lips were pursed, drawn tight and thin, and he muttered in the back of his throat. When they were nearly at their destination, lagging a couple minutes behind most of the other genin, Sasuke quietly addressed his teammates.

"There are going to be some nasty snakes in that forest, you know," he said lowly. "Ones as venomous as any we've ever seen."

Sakura and Naruto caught his meaning right away. It wasn't a terribly subtle code by the Uchiha's standards, but he wanted to certain they understood what he was saying.

"We've been bitten before," said the latter, matching Sasuke's pace. "We know the signs to look for, and we know how to draw the poison out. Even the foulest serpent fears the hawk's talons."

"How _poetic_," Sasuke drawled, arching a single eyebrow. "Read that in a fortune cookie, did you?"

Naruto shrugged.

"A book of proverbs, actually," he confessed. "Hinata got me one for my thirti... well, for one of my birthdays."

"I wonder if we'll actually run afoul of any snakes, though," Sakura muttered, glancing pointedly at Sasuke's missing arm. "They might not see us as... well, a _threat_, I suppose you could say," she tactfully remarked.

"Who else would they go after?" Sasuke retorted, frowning.

Sakura smiled and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, I have a few ideas..." she said meaningfully, trailing off after a moment.

"Hm, would you look at that," Naruto interrupted. "We're here."

And so they were. Team Seven had arrived outside of Training Ground Forty-Four, where most of the rest of the Chuunin Exam participants were already waiting. Only a few stragglers remained, and even the very last was only a couple minutes behind Sasuke and friends.

Naruto beamed and waved an enthusiastic hello to Team Guy. Sakura glanced shrewdly at Tenten, who noticed her attention and frowned; the odango-haired brunette seemed reluctant to look in Lee's direction, her ears were a faint shade of pink. Neji, for his part, was acting nervous, and he seemed to be purposefully interposing his teammates between himself and Team Eight.

Most of the genin teams were keeping to themselves, and there was little to no mingling outside of their respective village groups. None of them seemed terribly eager to interact with foreigners, regardless of the ostensible purpose of the Chuunin Exams.

The genin from Kusa and Ame, in particular, seemed especially tight-lipped and mistrustful. Both villages were quite small, although they had been around for decades, and while there weren't official hostilities between any of the villages represented here, everyone knew that there was no love lost, either.

And the less said about Oto, the better.

But one of the genin on one of the Hidden Grass squads was looking curiously at Team Seven, frowning and staring at the Uzushio crests on Naruto's blindingly orange apparel. The bespectacled redhead eyed him and his teammates, looking alternately hopeful and afraid. A couple of times she looked close to standing upright and walking over to them, but she would then falter, and shrink away.

Naruto or Sakura probably would have gone over and greeted the girl, but then Anko spoke up and addressed the assembled genin.

"Alright, boy and girls, listen up, and listen well!" the pony-tailed violette declared, standing with her back to the test-takers.

She stood facing a gate in the wire fence which demarcated the boundaries of the massive forest beyond. The door was secured with triple padlocks and a paper talisman, and a battered and weather-worn sign hung from it, declaring in a bold and ominous font:

_NO TRESPASSING_

Anko turned to look over her shoulder at the genin, and many of the participants gulped in fear. A pall of dread hung over most of the genin, and Anko had a carefully cultivated look of sadistic amusement on her face as she peered at them with a haughty, condescending smirk.

"This is the arena for the second exam:" she said with a flourish, gesturing to the towering, ancient trees beyond the fence, "Training Ground Forty-Four. Also known as..."

She paused a moment for dramatic effect, and it sounded like one of the less resolute participants happened to whimper.

"...the **FOREST OF DEATH!**" she finished, putting a great deal of emphasis on the nickname. Some of the more timid test-takers let out audible squeaks. Even the more hardened cynics in the crowd could at least appreciate Anko's theatrics.

Sasuke frowned when he noticed the pointedly amused look Anko shot at him.

Sakura smiled, though, and looked up appreciatively at the massive trees.

"Ooh, this is a pretty creepy place," she said, not entirely facetious. "I bet all kinds of scary, nasty things live in those woods~"

Naruto nodded thoughtfully, eyeing the towering oaks and spruces. He smiled, breathing deeply of the green air. He felt at home among these trees, a leftover perhaps from spending half his life with an arm made of Hashirama putty.

"Mm-hm," the blond hummed absentmindedly.

Anko turned to face the genin full on. Some of the male participants – and a couple females, too – promptly found themselves quite hard-pressed to look their examiner in the eye. Even if you couldn't actually _see_ anything through the fishnet, that formfitting top combined with that trenchcoat draped strategically over her frame gave off the illusion of being practically naked.

The Second Chief Examination Officer's eyes sparked with mischief, noticing this, and she widened her grin to show plenty of teeth.

"Heh... You twerps are about to learn the reason for that name firsthand," she said, casting her gaze over the captive audience.

Amber orbs alighted on Sasuke, who rolled his eyes and scoffed. He looked both unamused and unimpressed.

"_Please_," he muttered under his breath, shooting a disdainful glance at his wife and his best friend. "Don't make me laugh. We could run through this forest with our eyes closed."

He spoke too softly for Anko to hear his words, but she could see his mouth and read his lips.

She smiled.

"Mm, you're a pretty cocky one, aren't you?" she said, looking directly at Sasuke. Her grin didn't falter for even an instant.

Faster than any genin could be expected to follow, Anko whipped out a kunai and threw it. She aimed it just past Sasuke, sending the blade on a trajectory that would graze his cheek before coming to a stop harmlessly in the dirt without actually hitting anyone. And even as she threw the kunai, she mustered a bit of chakra in her legs, preparing for a short, precise _shunshin_ to bring herself behind the one-armed boy.

It was a move intended to spook much weaker and less skillful opponents, perfect for psyching out rookies, cannon fodder, and mooks. For it to be effective, she had to be considerably faster than her target, had to have better aim and quicker reflexes. This sort of maneuver would be useless against someone as good as her, and borderline suicidal against someone better, but Sasuke was just a rookie genin.

Or so she thought.

Of course, you the reader are well aware that Sasuke is in fact a beyond-kage-level shinobi, and that he retains all the knowledge, reflexes, and chakra of his future self. Even the reduced proportions of his younger body were hardly more than a very mild inconvenience for a ninja of his skill.

Anko was good. She was DAMN good.

But she could not have anticipated Sasuke managing to snatch her kunai out of the air and point it at the spot where her face would be when she reappeared behind him.

She wasn't _that_ good.

Anko blinked, staring at the pointed iron poised right between her eyes. She had been planning to lean forward and whisper some sweet, intimidating nothings into the Uchiha twerp's ear and maybe lick some blood from the scratch on his cheek just to really freak him out, but it seemed he had guessed her plan.

Someone else might have been disconcerted that a one-armed rookie genin had managed to catch their kunai without getting a hair out of place and then flawlessly anticipate the end destination of their body flicker. Uchiha or not, sharingan or not, that was a helluva feat, and something that a more paranoid individual might call uncanny, or even _suspicious_.

Anko simply laughed.

"Well, well!" she said, cheerfully grinning. "Good on you, kid. You might actually make it out of the forest alive with moves like that!"

And, seeming completely unperturbed by the fact that a very sharp kunai was only centimeters from her brow, Anko nonchalantly planted a teasing kiss on the boy's cheek.

"Keep your guard up, handsome," she said, her tone a patronizing singsong. "It'd be a real _shame_ for anything to happen to that pretty face of yours❤"

Sasuke blinked.

For a moment, he stared into space.

Then his eyes widened, his jaw went slack, and his cheeks burned bright red. He dropped the kunai and recoiled with a yelp, whipping his head around to stare at Anko. He looked stunned and scandalized by the sudden smooch.

Anko grinned ferally. Sakura giggled, and Naruto snorted back a laugh.

"I... I'll keep that in mind," Sasuke squeaked. You could have fried an egg on his face at that moment, and he slumped forward awkwardly even as he inched backwards from the woman.

Laughter gleamed in Anko's eyes, and she was smirking knowingly as she stepped back and turned to once more address the assembled genin. She proceeded to give a short run down on what they would be doing for the second phase of the exam, casually psyching out the test-takers with her cheerfully sadistic act and unabashedly morbid statements.

Naruto elbowed Sasuke in the ribs as Anko passed out the consent forms. He gave his friend a rakish grin and waggled his eyebrows, pointing with his eyes to Anko's chest region and signing _'squeezed melons'_.

Sasuke gave Naruto a covert three-inch punch to the gut and silenced him with a black look. _'Not another damn word,'_ his expression seemed to say. He wrapped his arm conspicuously around Sakura's waist, earning a strangled whine and dismayed look from Ino, who happened to spy this.

"I'd almost forgotten how _fit_ Anko-san used to be," Sakura whispered teasingly, reciprocating Sasuke's defensive embrace of her. "She's very attractive, isn't she? Not to say that she wasn't cute the _other _way, of course..."

Sasuke choked at this, and whipped his head around to give her a Look.

"_Not helping,_" he hissed, slouching a little further.

Sakura bit back a giggle, and absentmindedly accepted a trio of consent forms for her and her teammates. She smiled at Anko, who chuckled, winked teasingly at Sasuke, and muttered something about randy little brats before moving on to the other participants.

Once everyone had received their consent forms, Anko proceeded to explain the test.

Sasuke didn't pay that much attention to what she said: he was trying very hard to look anywhere _but_ at their examiner. His cheeks were still burning pretty hard, and while the worst bits of discomfort had receded, he could remember much too vividly how certain parts of her anatomy had... _squished_ into his back.

That damn woman was far too carefree. She was infuriatingly exuberant with absolutely no sense of personal space. Like a freaky, unholy mix of Naruto and Orochimaru.

Sasuke shuddered at the thought.

**Horrifying**.

* * *

><p>When the word was given, the teams darted through the gates and into the Forest of Death. This was the sort of place that only an Ent or a mokuton-user could love, old and wild and preeminently treeish, a country that belonged not to fleeting man or beast, but to the ancient and gnarled titans. It was dark beneath the primeval eves, and an earthy scent of growth and decay hung thick in the air.<p>

Genin cells raced into the forest, flitting between the massive trees like ants scurrying about an elephant's feet. Some hurried ahead, others hanging back to lay traps, while others tried their hand at actively seeking out the other teams.

Hinata let Shino and Kiba lead the way to a spot she vaguely recalled from the last time around. Shino said something about giant flying leeches, and Kiba made a cocky remark about home team advantages. The idea, it seemed, was to lie in wait for a foreign team to run afoul of the native fauna and take their scroll when the leeches attacked.

"My colony can produce pheromones to deter most of the indigenous predators, so we should be safe," Shino said. "But most of the other teams won't have such an advantage."

"Right, and Akamaru can warn us about anything that wouldn't be afraid of your bugs," Kiba agreed, nodding eagerly. His eyes were bright with enthusiasm, and he was grinning toothily. Survival exercises were his bread and butter, and Shino was similarly adept.

This particular test would be a piece of cake for Team Eight.

And sure enough, almost right away another team came stumbling into the area, and fell prey to the leeches. Horrified screams rang through the woods, and Hinata was tempted to step in – especially when she saw the Leaf headbands.

"We should probably get those leeches off of them," she suggested to her teammates when the last of the unfortunate genin fell unconscious. "It wouldn't be very patriotic of us to leave fellow Konoha ninja in such a state."

Kiba gave her an odd look at this. Shino hopped down and started to rifle through the insensate genin squad's pockets.

"They signed the waivers," Kiba said with a shrug. "Everyone in this forest is an enemy."

"But what kind of enemy?" Hinata asked him rhetorically. "Certainly there are some people in this forest I would not object to leaving like this..."

She thought of Kabuto and his teammates, in particular, and Orochimaru as well. He was somewhere in this forest even as they spoke, probably tracking down Team Seven.

Her fingers twitched.

"...but there are also many people I would say are only _technically_ our enemies," she continued after a moment's silence, shaking her head and clearing her thoughts. "Especially the other Leaf ninja."

Kiba frowned, as though she had just suggested something completely preposterous.

"Ain't many people here I wouldn't mind throwing to the wolves," he muttered peevishly, no doubt thinking in particular of Naruto and the rest of Team Seven.

Hinata sighed. Kiba was very loyal to his friends, but it seemed he didn't put much store by nationalism or village chauvinism. In one way, this was a very progressive, egalitarian attitude to have. But it was also frustrating in other ways.

"I found their scroll," Shino said, calling up to them. "It would seem we're in luck."

Kiba pumped a fist in the air and crowed victoriously.

"All right!" he cheered. "Sucks to be _those_ losers!"

Hinata smiled exasperatedly.

"Would you mind removing those leeches, Shino-kun?" she politely requested. "I'd rather not have the deaths of fellow Konoha shinobi on my conscience."

Kiba rolled his eyes at this, but he didn't say anything to directly challenge her remark. This was not to say, mind you, that he took it with any sort of grace.

"Wouldn't have figured _you_ for the sort to practice favoritism," he grumbled.

Hinata smiled beatifically.

"I haven't the faintest idea what you mean," she said innocently. "I am simply looking out for Leaf village comrades."

Kiba frowned, and looked like he was about to say something else to this. He didn't get a chance, however.

A roaring of wind and thrashing of boughs reached their ears, cutting him off, and a second later they were caught in a hurricane, tumbling head over heels in a rushing vortex. They were sent flying like ragdolls – scattered as leaves before a gale – their world spinning and spiraling out of control.

Hinata had just enough time to recognize this as a wind style ninjutsu before she lost sight of her teammates. She was barely able to right herself in midair before crashing into a tangle of thorns and brambles.

That was not terribly pleasant. She got scratched in places she'd almost forgotten she had, and it hurt like a sumbitch.

Mentally swearing a blue streak, she sprang back to her feet and out of the underbrush. She willed her chakra up and out. Pressure built around her eyes, and she felt veins bulge. Her field of view spread out and extended dizzingly quickly, reaching a distance of several kilometers in a fraction of a second.

_Oh, shit. This is not good._

She saw her teammates. Kiba looked dazed, like he'd hit his head on something less than soft, and Shino's colony was buzzing about him in distress. She also saw a giant snake headed towards each of them.

And that wasn't even the worst news.

No, THAT honor belonged to the gender ambiguous Grass-nin standing before her with a predatory smile and dangerously gleaming eyes. She saw this person's chakra, and knew immediately that it could only be Orochimaru.

Or at least she hoped it was Orochimaru. It would not be terribly nice to find out there was more than one kage-level shinobi running around the Forest of Death.

"Hello, little girl," the alleged genin said, smiling at Hinata wickedly. "It would seem you have been separated from your other teammates. Perhaps I could help you find them?"

Every word out of that mouth was dripping with perilously saccharine venom, and Hinata unconsciously slid into a combat stance.

"No thank you," she said. "I can already where they've landed."

The possible Orochimaru's eyes lit up at this, and he (she? it?) licked his (her? its?) lips.

"_Marvelous_," he breathed, and Hinata shuddered at how _pleased_ this voice sounded. She'd forgotten just how indecent Orochimaru could make even the most innoccuous statements sound. "How wonderful for you, to have already achieved such control over your bloodline limit at such a young age..."

**God**, it sounded like he was having an orgasm with every word he spoke.

...and _now_ Hinata found herself thinking of Orochimaru having sex.

Her breakfast very nearly propelled itself back out of her mouth in response to the ensuing mental images. An acidic bile taste befouled the back of her tongue, and her stomach lurched horribly. She gagged and came uncomfortably close to emptying her guts on the forest floor.

"Thanks for the compliment," she mumbled insincerely, trying hard to take her mind off of those awful, AWFUL thoughts. She took a deep breath, carefully assessing Orochimaru(?) and trying to decide the best course of action.

Shino and Kiba were taking care of their snakes, fortunately enough. The former had engulfed the probable summon in chakra-draining kikaichuu, while the latter had tossed his canine familiar a soldier pill and flung himself into the serpent's gaping maw, a whirling dervish tearing through the creature's unprotected esophagus.

If nothing else, at least her teammates could take care of themselves.

That was good.

It was doubtful she would get a chance to help them if things went the way she was starting to dread.

"I really hope you haven't come here for my body," Hinata said, concentrating the bulk of her attention on the possible Orochimaru before her. "Because it isn't really _mine_ to give away, if you understand me. It hasn't been for... almost fourteen years, I believe."

The supposed Grass ninja chortled in a disturbingly sultry fashion. Hinata shuddered and forced to ignore this.

"Yes, we all owe our lives to divine providence, do we not?" said the ambiguously-gendered individual in a tone which suggested that they found the very notion to be laughably quaint. "But it is man's prerogative to forge his own path regardless of heaven's mandates. If we allow ourselves to be held back by childish concepts of morality, then we will never advance beyond what we have now. Your only obligation, in the end, is to yourself."

Okay, now Hinata could say almost **certainly** that this was Orochimaru. Probably. Not many people in their line of work cared one way or another about ethics, but the infamous snake summoner seemed to perceive codified morality as a personal insult.

"That is not quite what I meant," Hinata said blithely. "You can hardly give away something that is jointly owned, after all."

She noticed a glint of amusement in Orochimaru's eyes.

"My, how quickly children grow these days..." he purred. "But I am a rather jealous sort, I'm afraid. I have no intentions of sharing my body."

He struck, as swift and sudden as a viper, lashing out with a knife-handed blow that sliced through the brush and brambles as effortlessly as a wind chakra blade through butter. Or granite. There wasn't much difference between the two, really: not to shinobi of their level.

As it was, mind you, Orochimaru's attack might as well have been a soft nudge. It would not have made a difference either way. You kind of have to land your attacks in order for them to do anything, after all.

Hinata was about as slippery as soap in a prison shower, and failing to pin her down tended to have similarly unpleasant repercussions.

"I'd say it's no more yours to take than it is mine to give, personally," Hinata blithely quipped, a finger jabbing into her assailant's sternum. "But then maybe that's just me."

She skipped backwards, fluidly sidestepping a retaliatory swipe. The heel of her palm clapped sharply down on Orochimaru's tricep, parrying his arm aside and making him hiss. He made to circle around her, a quick feint to her right before strafing to her left, quickly weaving a few handseals. But she anticipated this, apparently, and he only just managed to spring over her sweeping low kick.

Orochimaru was no slouch in any department, it should perhaps be reminded, and he was easily a kage-level shinobi. This was not the sickly armless wretch who had been killed in his bed by a presumptuous teenager, or the technically reformed scientist who had slowly faded into obscurity. This was the man who had spent over four decades mastering one _jutsu_ after another in relentless pursuit of knowledge and power, a shinobi sufficiently strong and cunning to singlehandedly conquer an entire nation.

Hinata had some serious skills herself, and was in raw ability good enough to match the snake summoner blow for blow. Furthermore, she had a better idea of his capabilities than he did of hers. The gentle fist was a formidable style, and her byakugan granted her an enviably complete awareness of the battlefield. She pressed her advantage and kept in close, striking swiftly and ruthlessly at every opening she could find or create.

But as the exchange of blows continued, and the seconds of their fight drew on, it became apparent that Hinata was at an unfortunate disadvantage. Her body was much smaller than it used to be, and did not have the years of physical conditioning she subconsciously expected it to have. Against most enemies this would not have been an issue – clever chakra manipulation could enhance her speed, reflexes, and striking force to the maximum of her ability, and her twenty some years combat experience would have been sufficient to give her an advantage in most cases.

Orochimaru was more experienced, though. He was genuinely brilliant and perilously clever. He had been a shinobi for almost twice as long as her, and had fought through far more battles than she had ever seen. The better part of Hinata's career after the Fourth Shinobi War had been rather uneventful, with a few minor (and not-so-minor) exceptions; while she was not the sort to let discipline languish in motherhood, she had still not been in a serious life-or-death battle for several years.

Orochimaru, in contrast, was at this point in time the sort to actively seek out trouble, and stir up conflict wherever he went. He was as far from being out of practice as you could conceivably get, and age had taken no significant toll on his abilities.

Really, it said a LOT for Hinata skill that her weaknesses only became apparent against a foe of Orochimaru's level.

Not that he could really press his advantage. She had kinda already blocked off his tenketsu by the time she realized all of this... which one could argue meant that Orochimaru didn't actually have the advantage at all, but whatever.

"_Gentle Step: Twin Lion Fist!_"

"OH GOD NOT THE FACE."

* * *

><p>Sasuke looked up from the Rain genin at his feet, a small frown on his face.<p>

"Did you hear something just now?" he asked his teammates, who were in the process of searching two other participants from Ame.

"Nope, not a thing," said Naruto, absentmindedly stripping the unconscious teen beneath him. "Why, did you?"

"I don't know... maybe," Sasuke replied.

"It was probably just the wind," Sakura said dismissively. Her face lit up as she pulled off her subject's gas mask. "Ooh... this one's kinda cute. A shame he hides it behind this contraption. He's probably an eight."

"Meh, I'd call him a six at best," Naruto shrugged. "_Maybe_ a seven if he cleaned himself up. But then, I suppose I'm not really the best judge of male attractiveness."

Sakura laughed, and shot a grin in her husband's direction.

"Of course, Sasuke's my perfect ten," she said with a wink.

"And Naruto?" said Sasuke, a hint of amusement in his expression.

"Maybe a nine," she answered cheekily. "But I reckon I could be amenable to an upgrade if he ever bothered to provide a little extra service."

"I am not walking through this forest without a shirt on," Naruto said blithely. "Those branches get everywhere when we're running."

"Aw, you're no fun," Sakura said, pouting theatrically.

"Aaaannnd we have hit paydirt," Sasuke spoke up, retrieving a scroll from his subject's pocket.

"Alright!" Sakura cheered. "This'll be a record time for sure."

"Aw, can't we at least pay Karin-neechan a visit?" Naruto said, echoing Sakura's previous whine. "I wanna see how she's doing."

"The reunion's just four weeks away," Sasuke retorted. "You can see her then."

"If she decides to attend."

"Yes, if she decides to attend."

Naruto snorted, and shot Sasuke a dark look.

"If it was Itachi in this forest, you'd be chomping at the bit to go see him."

Sasuke reciprocated with interest, glowering acidly at his friend and liege.

"Kiss my ass," he sniped.

"Suck my dick," Naruto retorted with a comically imperious sniff.

Sakura giggled, a mischievous gleam in her eyes as she looked from one to the other.

"Ohoho! I'd pay good money to see that❤" she interjected playfully.

Both men-turned-boys turned red as beets. They suddenly found it very hard to look one another in the eye, and both apparently became quite interested in their feet.

A moment passed in awkward silence, only to be broken by a shrill and girlish shriek.

_"OH SWEET MERCIFUL JEBUS."_

Sasuke blinked.

"Okay, I _know_ I heard something that time."

* * *

><p>"Snakes," Kiba hoarsely muttered, wiping a bit of viscera from his brow. "Why is it always snakes?"<p>

He was grimacing as he staggered away from the snake's remains, and Akamaru trotted after him with a strip of serpent flesh in his mouth. The human wrinkled his nose at the smell of death that started to fill the clearing, and looked down at his bloodsoaked clothes.

He then looked at Akamaru, whose fur had not yet gone back to white despite the soldier pill's effects wearing off.

"Ugh, I need a serious bath," Kiba groaned.

Akamaru whined at that statement, and slinked along reluctantly beside his master.

"Yeah, you too," Kiba told the pup. "Sorry."

Akamaru visibly sulked.

"Oh, don't give me that look. I'm sure Hinata'll be happy to give you a wash, if that makes it any better," Kiba said, rolling his eyes.

Akamaru instantly perked up.

"Arf!" he barked, wagging his tail and spattering a bit more blood on Kiba's trouser leg.

"Now all we have to do is _find_ her," Kiba muttered, more to himself than to his dog.

_"THAT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BEND THAT WAY."_

Akamaru's ears perked up, and the young ninken cheerfully yipped.

"Huh. Yeah, I heard it too. Think it has anything to do with Hinata?"

Akamaru wagged his tail and barked.

"Yeah, you're probably right. Shino might be there too."

And so the pair of them set off in the direction of the screams.

* * *

><p>AN: I've been reading lots of _Harry Potter_ fanfiction recently, so I haven't had as much time to write. Also I'm back at work again after a month-long vacation, and have been doing some unrelated stuff on-and-off elsewhere for a friend.

I am dreadfully drowsy as I type this A/N, so I cannot think of anything else to say. I _know_ I should probably proofread this chapter like I have been the others, but I'm too damn tired to bring myself to do it. Plus it was kind of a nightmare figuring out what to do as far as the Orochimaru encounter, though I have known for several chapters that I wanted him to go after Hinata rather than Team Seven. Just by itself, that particular bit gave me writer's block for nearly a week.

Also, also, have been playing _Ocarina of Time 3D_ after months of not touching the game. I'd gotten stuck waaaay back in Dodongo cavern, but after picking it back up about a week or so ago I've already made my way up to the Shadow Temple. It's rather convenient timing, actually, considering that _Majora's Mask 3D_ is supposed to be coming out in a week or so, haha.

I never played Ocarina of Time as a kid – we had an SNES, but never an N64, and our cousins who DID have one pretty much only had Banjo Kazooie and Glover, that I can recall. The first Zelda game I ever actually played was _Link to the Past_ on GBA (I believe that one had _technically_ belonged to my younger brother, but he didn't play that much). The second, I am almost certain, was _Twilight Princess_. I never really managed to get that far in _Skyward Sword_, half because we had bad luck with our Wii either refusing to read the disc or being taken by my youngest brother when he moved out (even though it wasn't really his to take).

I'm not really sure whatever happened to our SNES either, actually, which is kinda sad. I never really played it back when he had it – that console was more our dad's than anything, if you go by who played it the most. Just thinking about it gives me loads of nostalgia, really... I can remember that I used to just read the instruction manual for _Donkey Kong Country 3_, and I have loads of run-together memories of watching dad play games on it.

Ah, the halcyon days of youth. Which is kinda silly to say since I'm only 23, but I suppose that's still old enough to occasionally think longingly of the good old days, haha.

D'you know, my middle brother and I were born only a year and a day apart? Me on 10-29-91, and him on 10-30-92. Haha, I reckon that helped our parents save a reasonable amount of money in terms of birthday parties, since we used to basically just throw 'em on the same day... XP

Also this fic still has a TV Tropes page, last I checked. That is still awesome and shiz. :D

Also, also, I sp'ose I'll plug another fic of mine that strangely hasn't gotten much attention. _A True Story_ is, like, a year old by now, and only six or so chapters long, but I think it's a very interesting idea. I don't know of anyone else who's tried MST'ing their own old fics.

**Updated: **2-5-15

**TTFN and R&R!**

– — ❤


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